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“Why else would someone be in these trees?” Nate asked.
Laura shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t remember it being this… dark. The light of the moon came down in a few places.”
“Were you seeing another season?” Nate suggested.
Laura shook her head again. “It’s winter already. If these trees were going to drop their leaves, they would have already. They must be evergreen.”
“Weird,” Nate said. He shrugged. “Where do we go next?”
“This way,” Laura said, leading him through the trees as best as she could. From time to time, she closed her eyes. The dream was still so vivid in her memory that she could see it if she shut out what was in front of her, almost overlaying it on reality. More than once, though, something confused her. A snapped-off branch that was whole in the vision or vice versa, a vine crawling up a tree trunk that she didn’t recognize, or a bush that seemed out of place.
But, finally, her feet led her correctly. They emerged out into the open space of the clearing – and there, ahead of them, was the cabin.
Laura frowned.
This wasn’t right.
“This is it?” Nate asked, pausing in response to her hesitation.
“I…” Laura bit her lip, trying to think. “I’m sure this is it. But it looks… wrong.”
“Wrong how?” Nate asked.
“Older,” Laura said, which was the only thing she could really think of. “The place is falling apart.”
“Okay,” Nate said. “Well… could it be that the person who you saw – the male attacker – was living here? What if he moves in and fixes it up a bit? If we’re here way too early, that would explain why everything looks a little different.”
“Maybe,” Laura said. “I guess that would explain why he was in the woods in the first place.”
“Let’s check this place out and see if anyone’s living here right now,” Nate said. “The vision – did you get the feeling this was his first attack?”
Laura considered it, measuring it against everything she knew about killers. “No, I don’t think so. He saw her and he went after her right away. It was like he knew what he wanted and how to do it. This would be a serial offender. Even if it was his first kill, I would expect him to have assaulted women in the past.”
“Then we might just have cause to bring him in if he’s here already,” Nate reasoned. “Let’s find out.”
Laura nodded and followed his lead as they walked up to the hut. The closer she saw it, the more confused she felt. It looked like the wood was rotting – just like it was at Mickey’s. Part of the door had even been ripped off close to the top. But she was sure it looked like the door she had seen in her vision. Was it possible that someone had deliberately restored it to the way it used to look?
Or… was there something else going on here entirely?
“Hey!” Nate, who was in front of Laura and blocking her view, shouted so suddenly that she actually jumped. Before she had time to react to that, a dark shape darted through the opening door of the hut and flew to the side, and Laura found her body moving after it by instinct. It was only after she’d started to run that her brain processed the shape had to be a human – and therefore, maybe, the man she had seen in her vision.
There was nothing for her to touch to set off another vision, no way to predict where the man was going to run. All she could do was throw herself after him as rapidly as she could – with Nate at her side, shouting for him to stop, doing his best to outpace her.
The figure quickly darted among the trees, and for a moment Laura thought that was going to be the end of it – that there would be no way they would catch up with him. He would disappear into the thick branches and out of sight, with no way for them to figure out where he had gone without stopping to listen – which would only give him even more of an advantage.
Until the runner looked back over his shoulder to check how far behind they were –
And ran flat into a tree trunk, knocking himself to the ground so hard that even Laura winced.
CHAPTER FOUR
He sat back in his chair, reclining as far as it would go, and closed his eyes. These lunch breaks were sacred to him. He always came to a far part of the yard, a secluded place where no one would come to interrupt him. He turned his phone to silent. He blocked out any and all noise coming from the shop.
And then he was back there, reliving it, like it was a dream. More than a dream. Like he was back there himself.
It was a special pleasure for him to remember every single detail. He would start with the moment he first saw them, how he decided that they would be the one. How he watched them walk through the night, tottering helplessly like newborn foals on their heels, so clearly in need of someone to steer and help them.
Oh, how he would watch them. There always seemed to be some jeopardy at this point: Would they stumble and fall and injure themselves before he could even reach them? Would they break an ankle and howl into the night sky for help, or would they fall into the path of the one oncoming car that happened to pass at an inopportune moment?
