by Kyla Stone
DAY FIVE
The ATV bounced through a narrow break in the trees and burst onto the old logging road.
Shiloh jerked the handlebars, turned hard, and headed east toward the town of Christmas. Her headlights caught the rutted road ahead of her. Great spruce, pine, birch, and hemlocks towered on either side, forming a gnarled black tunnel into the red-washed dark.
Behind her, a second pair of headlights bounced onto the road. Shiloh glanced in her rearview mirror, her pulse a roar in her ears.
Harsh lights bore down on her, catching her in the spotlight. The dark shape of a truck loomed behind the glare, ominous and indistinct.
She’d driven every logging road within twenty miles of Christmas and knew the twists and turns like the back of her hand. Problem was, this guy might, too.
Her mind raced; she visualized what lay ahead. The weed-choked gravel road curved in an undulating S, skirting Christmas before snaking toward Munising.
The logging road stretched on for a good ten miles before it hit another road. Few vehicles traversed the roads this time of night; he would overtake her long before then.
Shiloh rounded a bend, breaking slightly and leaning into the turn, then pushed the throttle and sped up to forty, forty-five, then fifty. Far slower than the powerful truck chasing her.
She felt small and helpless. Overpowered and outmanned.
He would catch her. He could run her over.
The ATV rounded another curve; she crouched, rising up from the seat to lean and keep from tipping. The truck’s headlights kept her pinned. They swallowed her up. Caught her like a fly in a web.
To her left, the dense forest bristled, thick tree trunks grew close together, standing tall and silent and unbending. No passage to slip through, no pathway to outmaneuver the monster at her back.
To her right, the ground fell away, descending into a steep ravine littered with rocks and scraggly underbrush.
He had her.
The truck gunned its engine, loud and aggressive. Taunting her. It roared behind her. Thirty feet, then twenty.
Adrenaline shot through her veins. She held on tight, her arms rigid, muscles taut and straining. Sweat beaded her forehead, gathered beneath her armpits. Tendrils of her hair stuck slick to her skin.
If she lost control for a second, the ATV could skid out from beneath her, pitch her over the ravine, or send her careening into a wall of trees at fifty miles an hour.
The truck jammed in close. The driver honked the horn.
She flinched, clenched the handlebars tight and gritted her teeth. There had to be a way out of this. Had to be. She just had to find it.
The truck dropped back. Thirty feet. Then fifty. Then a hundred. The headlights receded. Was he gonna let her go? No. He wouldn’t.
If he knew what she’d seen. If he even suspected.
Shiloh held his freedom in her hands; they both knew it. Girl and driver. Predator and prey. No way to walk away from this.
He could not let her go, just like she could not ignore what she’d found.
She’d go to Jackson. If she lived long enough.
The FourTrax took another bend, this time too fast. She skidded up on two wheels, overcorrected and slid across the road. Gravel spit beneath her tires. Her heart thumped. A block of ice in her belly.
Behind her, the truck reappeared. The vehicle came barreling around the curve, tires growling over gravel, headlights stark and glaring.
It came up fast, so fast. The headlights grew impossibly large in her rearview mirrors. The glare was blinding. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t think.
Then the truck shifted left and pulled up alongside her. It was painted a dark color, maybe navy blue. Big shiny grill. A metal bar with overhead lights affixed to it. The driver a shadowy smudge at the edge of her vision.
She dared not look. To take her gaze from the road for even a second.
She tried slowing. He slowed with her.
She sped up, he shoved in tighter. His huge wheels spat gravel mere inches from the four-wheeler.
Her exhausted muscles strained, clammy fingers cramped on the handlebars. How long could she last? The road was endless. Her fear bottomless.
Past the cone of the headlights, the logging road fell into red-tinged darkness. Twenty yards ahead, a sharp curve to the right appeared.
Shiloh turned too fast, barely maintaining control.
He turned with her. Tires squealed. He swerved in and clipped her rear.
The FourTrax lurched and fishtailed. It plowed sharply right, toward the ravine. No control. She was utterly helpless. A scream locked behind her teeth.
The ATV plowed across the weedy shoulder, teetered on a narrow ridge of earth. For a second, the four-wheeler hung suspended on a filament of air.
Then she pitched over the edge.
The world spun. The FourTrax flipped end over end. Trees cartwheeled. Ground and sky tumbled like a washing machine on spin cycle.
Her fingers were ripped from the handlebars. Separated from the ATV, her body loose and flailing. She was flying, spinning into darkness, toward a bottom she could not see.
Her body bounced down the ragged slope like a ragdoll. Her shoulder struck a rock. Her right shin hit something—tree trunk, branch, boulder.
Her heart slammed. Terror in her throat. Falling, sliding, scrambling for purchase and finding none. Dead leaves crumbled beneath her fingernails. Damp leaves slid beneath her. Bushes scratched her arms, her face, yanked hair from her scalp. Twigs jabbed her palms.
Whether by miracle or instinct, she managed to throw her weight sideways. Her right shoulder glanced off a thick poplar trunk and spun her onto her back.
She slid a few yards. Her spine hit something soft. A thicket of bushes.
Finally, she rolled to a halt. Half-twisted on her side, legs bunched up. Pain radiated from her ribs, her right shoulder. Her left ankle throbbed.
A thunderous din came from above her. The four-wheeler was coming down. The machine slammed against boulders and bent saplings as it crashed down the hillside.
No time to move. To escape. To do anything but scream.
Shiloh shrank into a fetal position, threw her hands in front of her face, and braced for impact.
With a screech of wrenching metal, the ATV smashed into the trunk of the poplar tree, not three feet up the slope. The great tree shuddered. Leaves rained down on her head and torso.
The FourTrax sputtered. Smoke billowed from the twisted wreck. The engine ticked in the abrupt stillness. The headlights flickered and then died.
Shiloh heaved in great rasping breaths. Her lungs burned. Her pulse roared. Everything hurt. The world was still spinning.
She was alive.
But the threat was not over.
37
SHILOH EASTON
DAY FIVE
Shiloh’s head swam. Her pulse thudded in her throat. She pressed one hand to her chest to make sure her jackrabbit heart hadn’t thumped its way out of her chest.
She strained her ears. In the aftermath of violence, the forest had gone quiet. No night sounds. No owls hooted or coyotes howled, no creatures scrabbled through the underbrush. Even the wind had died.
The headlights blared from the ridgeline, probing the woods like spotlights. The white glow filtered through the leaves. Shadow and light made strange shapes in the night.
The crimson aurora undulated through the black sky, like a bloodstain you tried to scrub clean but couldn’t erase.
She lay on her back, staring up at the headlights. She dared them to move, begged them to move. They didn’t. The truck had stopped fifty feet above her.
Maybe he’d exited the truck and was peering down into the void. Deciding whether to go after her, weighing the odds.
Shiloh didn’t dare breath. If she moved, he’d hear her. He’d smell her terror like a wolf and sniff her out.
Her breath came in shallow, panicked gasps. The air smelled of dirt and sap. Vienna, Austria. Minsk, Belarus. Bruss
els, Belgium. She had to calm down, to think.
Up on the ridge, a sound reached her. A muffled curse. The crunch of leaves and twigs underfoot as a large figure stomped through underbrush.
A narrow beam swept across the trees, playing across her hiding spot. He had a flashlight. He was coming for her.
He made so much noise that she had the opportunity to move. Gingerly, she sat up, feeling for broken bones. Everything hurt, but she could move her legs, her arms.
Using the poplar trunk, she pulled herself to her feet. Pain shot up her ankle. She’d twisted it. No way could she run now.
In a race, she could beat any boy her age. She was fiercer, faster, stronger. But with her injured ankle, he would win.
She longed for her crossbow. Stupidly, she’d left it back at the cave, choosing speed over weaponry. She had her knife. Her fingernails, her teeth. And her cunning.
Frantically, she scanned her surroundings. It was hard to see anything in the murky shadows. If she used her penlight, she’d give herself away.
Steep walls of rock and earth rose on either side of her. Everywhere she looked were more woods, more trees. Snarled branches and dense underbrush blocked her way. There were few places to hide.
The forest that she loved took on a sense of malice. Hints of eyes, yellow in the red-tinged darkness, peered out of the gloom. Gnarled roots writhed underfoot, threatening to trip her, to trap her, to drag her under the damp earth and swallow her up.
A grunt echoed from above her. Curses and insults from a muffled masculine voice. Twigs crackled underfoot. The flashlight beam swept back and forth. He was higher up the ravine, searching the wrong places. But not for long.
Any moment, the flashlight beam might pin her, revealing her location.
Her gaze settled on the poplar tree and the smoking wreck at its base. Branches forked from the large trunk at regular intervals, starting at chest level. The lowest branches were thick as her waist.
Her pursuer would expect her to run. Any sane person would run. If she couldn’t find a hole to squirrel into, she would climb. Up, out of sight. Out of reach.
If he had a gun, she was screwed. Otherwise, it was her only chance.
Shiloh jerked her penlight out of her pocket, switched it on, and threw it deeper into the ravine. Then, she climbed. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she reached for the branch above her, pulling herself upward with the strength of her arms and her good leg, then levered herself to the next branch. Her ankle throbbed.
In the semi-darkness she worked by by touch, checking the branch first to ensure it would hold her weight. Shadows chased her up the trunk. Ten feet, twenty, then thirty.
She was a strong climber. Long summers spent outdoors made her agile and swift. As she climbed, she worked her way around the tree so that the trunk blocked her from the road.
Below her, the sweeping flashlight beam settled on the wrecked four-wheeler.
Shiloh froze. She clung to the branches, her stomach pressed to the trunk, the bark rough against her cheek. An ant crawled up her arm. One foot was stabilized. Her injured ankle hung unsupported, but she didn’t dare move.
Thirty feet below her, a man approached the wreckage. He slid down the embankment, cursing. As he thrashed through thorny underbrush, the beam of the flashlight never wavered from the crash site.
Her breath lodged in her throat. She waited for him to look up. Waited for those predator eyes to zero in on her. Would they glow in the dark like a bobcat? Or a wolf? Or maybe he was the evil windigo spirit made flesh.
Did he have a gun? What would he do if he found her?
Her mind began to disconnect, unconsciousness threatening to draw her away. That blankness coming for her. She felt it happening and fought to stay present. Prague, Czechia. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Shiloh bit down on her tongue until she drew blood. The taste of copper filled the back of her throat. She swallowed and pressed her cheek harder against the bark. Holding her breath, she forced herself to look down.
He stood beneath the poplar tree, breathing hard. She couldn’t make out details. He was too far below her, too many branches and leaves obscuring her view. He was merely a dark shape behind the beam of the flashlight, a menacing unknown presence.
“Where are you?” he said aloud. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
One fact did not elude her, however. She could tell by the shape of him, how he walked, the tenor of his voice.
The man who hunted her was not the school janitor.
He was not Calvin Finch.
The man studied the wreckage, head down. Then he squatted, pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the bumper stickers she’d plastered on the back—I Heart Paris, the Statue of Liberty, Machu Pichu. He took a photo of the registration.
The man stood, turned in a slow half circle and swept the flashlight across the ground. His shadow was black as ink on the ground.
Don’t look up.
Don’t. Look. Up.
He caught sight of the penlight’s glow and moved away from the tree, headed further into the ravine. He paused, then walked several yards west. Stopped again in front of a mulberry bush and picked up the penlight, then stood there for a long silent minute, as if bewildered.
Or thinking it out. Considering the options. Where a small girl might disappear to.
Panic seized her. He was going to figure it out. Any minute, he was going to—
Above them, a second set of headlights appeared on the logging road. The man went rigid. He flicked off the flashlight.
The headlights drew closer. The noise of a car engine invaded the unnatural stillness. Shiloh clung to the tree, willing it to come closer, for the driver to see the man’s truck, to stop.
Folks were courteous in the Upper Peninsula. They watched out for their neighbors.
The headlights slowed and came to a halt behind the truck. Doors slammed as two figures exited the vehicle. Low murmurs of concern drifted across the ravine.
“Hello?” a female voice called. “Anybody need help down there?”
“I see shattered glass on the road,” a male voice said. “Looks like an accident.”
The man cursed. The nearness of it startled her, set her heart thumping. She could barely make out the shape of him as he turned back and started up the steep side of the ravine, climbing up to the road.
Shiloh waited, her body taut as piano wire. Her fingers felt like claws, her muscles cramped. The ant crawled across her cheek. A larger bug worked its way into her pantleg and wandered up her left shin.
The man called out to the couple in a friendly voice. Disarming. Non-threatening. There was an exchange of mingled voices, their words too indistinct to discern.
More doors slammed. A pair of headlights flickered from high beam to low beam, then the truck’s engine growled as it pulled off the shoulder and back onto the road. It drove north. A moment later, the second vehicle followed behind it. Gradually, the noises faded to silence.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. An owl hooted from somewhere. Only when she’d stopped shaking did she dare to move, to make the laborious descent, limb by limb, branch by branch.
When she reached the bottom, her ankle gave out and she crumpled to the leaf-littered ground. She curled into a ball, her knees tight to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. Leaves stuck to her clothes. Pine needles snarled in her hair.
Shiloh was a thirteen-year-old girl in the woods at night. Not brave, not fierce. But scared and hurt and terribly, utterly alone.
38
ELI POPE
DAY SIX
Eli’s eyes opened. He never slept soundly, half his senses constantly alert to danger, to the slightest sound or sensation.
He’d been dozing, dreaming of blood and war, of prison and broken bodies.
It was three a.m. Something wasn’t right.
A soft crackle.
Instantly, his hand moved for his weapons. His VP9 and AK-17 lay beside him within easy reach. AK-47
in hand, he rose to his knees and peered from the firing port he’d built into the lean-to.
At his twelve o’clock, thirty feet ahead, the tent sat in the middle of the clearing. The aurora bathed the site in a soft red glow. He’d placed a chem-light in the tent and used heated rocks from the campfire in the general shape of a man—head, body, legs. Luckily, the tent was floorless.
If enemies tried to sneak up on him, on IR it would appear like Eli was sleeping oblivious inside the tent. Even if they didn’t have infrared, they’d see a light source inside the tent, giving Eli the precious seconds he’d need to engage or flee.
He strained his ears. The burble of the river. The buzz of night insects. The rustle of the trees.
A twig bent and snapped. The swish of footsteps through leaves.
The sounds came from the southwest. Maybe thirty, forty yards. Outside the perimeter warning he’d set but headed his direction.
Something—or someone—was out there.
Over his clothes, he slipped on the ghillie suit jacket he’d made to blur his shape against the forest. Within two seconds, he’d exited via the rear of the lean-to, pistol holstered and rifle in hand.
A cold, calm alertness descended. His breathing slowed. His heartrate steadied.
Half-crouched, he circled behind his shelter to the left, shifting from the cover of the boulder to the cover of an enormous white pine, the trunk as thick as a tire.
His barefoot footsteps were quiet; he moved as one with the shadows. Silent and invisible and lethal.
A rattle of rocks against tin. His perimeter alarm system had been tripped. The alarm consisted of a length of fishing wire attached to metal cans filled with pebbles. Simple yet incredibly effective.
Eli took a knee, braced himself, and raised the AK-17 to his shoulder. His finger rested on the trigger guard. He peered through his ACOG scope and waited for his prey.
Whoever hunted him would receive a rude awakening.
The moon hid behind a raft of clouds. It didn’t matter. The aurora was bright, red flames undulating overhead, outlining familiar shapes in crimson. The trees. The Dakota fire pit. The fallen log he used for seating. The makeshift clothesline. The tent, the boulder hunched behind it. The lean-to.