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“No” Devil stepped in front of me, and I tried to push him out of the way

Donaldson turned his weapon on us “Stop talking, both of you”

A shot rang out and Donaldson fell to the ground with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead

The girl stood there staring at us as stunned as I was

“I needed to distract hiun wasn’t turned on this young woman”

“Miriam,” she said “That’s my name”

I hurried over to her “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head as tears began to run down her face “I’m fine I… Thank you” She looked at Donaldson’s body, then toward the trees, then back to me “What happened?”

“We had a sniper friend in the trees”

She uess that’s a good friend to have sometimes”

“You’re right about that”

Oren had already joined us, and Giorgio appeared a moment later

Devil crouched down so Miriam didn’t have to look up at him “Can you tell us how you ended up here?”

She nodded “Yes, but… what about…” She pointed to Donaldson’s body

“We’ll take care of it,” Giorgio assured her

“You’re not calling the police?”

Devil shook his head “We don’t need to involve them”

“Who are you?”

Devil gave her a very abbreviated answer, but when he told her who Donaldson was and why she shouldn’t worry about hoere handling it, color drained froround

“He was a serial killer?”

I nodded “Yes I used to be a cop, and I helped put him in jail, but he escaped”

She took a long, slow breath then explained that she’d been setting up her booth, and he’d acted like he was dependent on a cane and asked her to help hiun on her when they reached the vehicle and forced her in Then he kept her at his cabin, telling her he’d let her go, but he needed her to get revenge on soo, and she knew it