Page 14

For half a heartbeat, I can’t breathe. Then my training takes over. I scan the bedroom. Bathroom door open. Window locked. No blood. No signs of a struggle.

“Sophie?”

Nothing.

I’m out of bed before I finish saying her name. My boots aren’t beside the front door. Her boots are gone and so is her coat. The lock is open—She escaped. Relief hits first. It lasts less than a second.

Then terror replaces it.

I cross the room, pull open the front door, and step onto the porch. Cold rain slashes across my face. The orange lights beneath the railing illuminate the clearing, but Sophie isn’t there.

“Sophie!”

My shout tears through the night. No answer comes back.

She doesn’t know the mountain. She doesn’t know the trails or where the ground drops sharply near the creek. She doesn’t know the storm knocked out the bridge on the southern access road two weeks ago.

She doesn’t know there’s a bull moose moving through this part of the forest. More importantly, she doesn’t know if the men from the market followed us.

I step off the porch and force myself to stop.

Small boot prints lead toward the trees. She’s alone. No second set of tracks. No drag marks. No one took her from the cabin.

I can breathe again, though not well.

“Sophie!”

Still nothing.

I follow her trail into the forest.

The wind drives rain through the canopy. Wet leaves slap against my face as I move beneath the trees. The beam of my flashlight bounces over exposed roots, rocks, and fallen branches.

Her tracks are clear at first.

She followed the old logging road east, probably believing it was the same road we took to the cabin. It isn’t. Our road goes west. This one curves deeper into the mountain before ending near the marsh.

After half a mile, her steps become uneven. She realizes she’s lost here. I can see it in the tracks. She turns back, but not completely. Instead of retracing her route, she angles south through the trees. She slips on a muddy slope and catches herself against a pine. One handprint stains the trunk.

I lay my palm over it.

It’s ridiculous. Nothing but mud. A mark she left minutes ago. She’s close.

I lift my head and listen. Wind. Rain. The distant rush of the creek. Then a branch cracks somewhere ahead. I move toward it.

“Sophie?”

“Samuel?” Her voice is faint.

My body reacts before my mind does. I break into a run, shoving through wet branches and leaping over a fallen tree. “Sophie!”

“Here!”

The relief is so intense it hurts.

Her flashlight flickers between the trees. She must have taken the small one from the hook near the cabin door. Its weak beam sweeps wildly across the forest as she tries to find me.

I see her through the thermal scope first. One warm shape stands beneath a maple tree. Another towers twenty yards beyond her.