Chapter 8 - The Hunters Return
Melissa pulled Sophie behind the thick trunk of a century-old blue spruce, peering through the needles.
A white Ford F-250 crawled along the access road, its high beams sweeping the brush. Melissa recognized the bent bumper and the custom toolbox in the bed immediately.
Daniel's truck.
The truck stopped near the old railroad trestle, fifty yards from where Melissa and Sophie hid. The engine idled, sending plumes of white exhaust into the freezing morning air.
The driver’s door opened. Daniel stepped out, wearing a heavy canvas coat and a hunter’s cap. He held a high-powered flashlight in one hand and a scoped hunting rifle in the other.
From the passenger side, Richard Hale climbed out stiffly, clutching a thermos of coffee.
"What are we doing out here, Daniel?" Richard’s voice carried across the frozen clearing, sharp and irritable. "We should be at the sheriff’s station in Silverton right now, filing the report. The longer we wait, the more suspicious it looks."
"I told you, Dad, I saw a light down by the lower culvert twenty minutes ago when we drove over the pass," Daniel snapped, sweeping the beam across the trees. "A flicker. Like an LED."
"You're jumping at shadows," Richard sneered. "They fell into Shaft Four. It's twenty feet of air and five hundred feet of drop-off into water below that. They're at the bottom of the world."
"I want to be sure!" Daniel shouted, his voice cracking with the strain of his guilt. "If Melissa managed to claw her way out, or if that brat found an adit, we aren't just broke—we’re going to Cañon City for life! I have to check the drainage outlet."
"And if they are out here?" Richard asked, his tone cold, clinical, and completely devoid of humanity.
Daniel racked the bolt of the rifle with a loud, metallic clack. "Then the hiking accident happened out on the cliffs instead of in the shaft. Wolves got them. Exposure took them. It doesn't matter. They don't leave this valley."
Behind the spruce tree, Sophie clutched Melissa’s jacket, her eyes wide with horror.
Melissa felt the last shred of familial connection snap inside her heart. The man who raised her and the brother who grew up across the hall weren't kin anymore. They were predators hunting her child.
Melissa reached into Sophie’s pocket, gently retrieving the cartoon owl flashlight and the voice-recorder keychain.
"Sophie," Melissa whispered directly into her daughter’s ear. "Do you see that concrete culvert under the highway? Right there, behind the guardrail?"
Sophie nodded.
"I need you to crawl through it. On the other side is the main highway. The moment you see a car, you wave your arms and you scream for help. Do not stop. Do not look back for me."
"No, Mom! I'm not leaving you!" Sophie whispered fiercely, tears welling in her eyes.
"You aren't leaving me, Sophie. You are saving us. I am going to lead them the other way." Melissa pressed the voice keychain into Sophie’s hand. "Keep this safe. This is our truth. Go. Now!"
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With one final, desperate squeeze of her daughter’s shoulder, Melissa stood up and stepped away from the tree, deliberately snapping a dead pine branch beneath her boot.
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