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“Then you’re going to run. And, being the gentleman that I am, I’m going to let you have a head start. Shall we say… five seconds?” he suggested. It wasn’t really a question. He didn’t pause for her to answer. “Then I’m going to run after you. And you have to win. If you make it back here first and grab that gun and turn around and shoot me, I won’t be able to hurt you anymore. Even if you only wing me or graze me, I promise – I won’t try to kill you.”
“And if I don’t?” she croaked, wetting her lips.
“If I catch you before you get the gun, then it’s over for you,” he said. “I’m going to kill you. I’ll stand over you as I watch the life drain from your eyes. That’s the game.”
“It doesn’t sound like much of a game,” she whimpered.
“Trust me, I’m going to have fun,” he said. He pulled her along after him, tugging at the rope around her wrists to force her to follow. She stumbled one step on her heels before seeming to find her feet again.
They walked through the woods, until he judged they were in about the right place. The sound from the road was still muted enough – and cars passed by infrequently enough – that he figured she wouldn’t even realize it was an option in her terrified state. But they were near the place: the place where Joy Kingsley had first seen him.
“Ready?” he asked. He looked into her face, feeding on the raw fear he saw there. She was shaking badly now.
She shook her head, but he grinned and pulled out a viciously sharp pocketknife anyway. He used it to cut through the ropes around her wrists, holding her in place with his hand for just one moment, letting her absorb the knife. Letting her fixate on it.
“On my mark, then,” he said. “Three, two, one – go!”
He let go of her hands and she began to run, and he couldn’t hold back a chuckle.
He counted to five in his head. At three, she stumbled and caught herself on a tree. At five, she set off running again.
But so did he.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Laura got out of her car at Mickey’s and looked both ways, crossing the road rapidly. There was no one around. It was as quiet here as it had been before – a forgotten part of town that most people avoided by taking the highway.
She was at the edge of the trees when she heard a woman scream.
Laura swore and grabbed her gun, holding it ready at her side. She looked ahead into the trees and then hesitated. They were thick here, too. She remembered walking over to the hut the first time, how difficult it had been. How it was tough to know if you were still on the right course. And back then, she hadn’t been fully aware she was sharing the woods with a known killer.
Hayley Sommer was alive in there. But where?
She was in the right place. She had come here at the right time. But, frustratingly, she still wasn’t sure where to go.
She remembered her promise, and even though every molecule in her body wanted to just charge right ahead, there was still one that she needed to keep her word. She grabbed her cell phone as quickly as she could, almost dropping it with the other hand holding her gun still, and hit speed dial for Nate.
Nothing happened.
She stared at her phone in dismay. There was no service. She bit her lip.
He knew where she was. He knew what she was doing. She had to do something to send him a message, even if she wasn’t sure he would get it.
She wrote out the quickest text message she could think of.
SOS
She hit send, shoved the phone back in her pocket where she knew the system would keep trying to send it until it found enough service to do so, and then plunged forward into the trees.
Like every other time she had done it, it was as if she had stepped into a different world. It was quieter here. The sounds of birds, not traffic, dominated the air. And it was darker, the mid-morning sun not penetrating down far enough. She might as well have been here hours earlier, when the dawn was just rising over the horizon, for the amount of visibility she had.
She had to find them. Somewhere in here was Hayley, and somewhere in here was the killer. No matter which one of them she found first, she was going to have to find them.
She flexed her fingers around the handle of the gun, keeping it lowered to the ground as she moved forward cautiously. The last thing she wanted was to be startled by someone bursting out of the trees and then find she had shot Hayley instead of the killer. She needed to proceed with as much caution as possible.
Somewhere up ahead, she heard a rustling noise. A man’s voice cried out, then more rustling.
Laura put her thundering heart to one side and ran in the direction of the noise.
