Chapter Thirty Seven

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

In Which the Murderer Becomes a Hero

This is what Peter the Murderer thought:

“Wow, what horrible, painful screams. It reminds me of the good old days. That is certainly a woman who wants to survive. Mmm, how lovely.”

He thought, “How unusual for somebody else to be on my turf. I certainly don’t like it. I just might need to hunt this other person down and have a frank, yet gentlemanly discussion, on what one does and doesn’t do when an active serial killer has laid claim to a specific area.”

He thought, “The girl.”

And once that brief thought ghosted over his mind, he could think no more. “The girl.” The girl he hunted, the girl he had gifted, the lonely girl from the stars whose very countenance had been frosted over by death before he even met her, and now?

And now somebody was beating him to her.

That galvanized him. That got his legs moving. He burst out of the blackberry bushes, heedless of the scratches, and pelted down the trail as fast as his legs