Chapter 4 - The Stalker in the Brush
Two men tumbled out of the cab into the muddy ruts of the logging trail.
"The radiator’s cracked, Dan!" Marcus was screaming, his voice hysterical, bordering on complete mental collapse. "The block is seizing up! We're not making it to the interstate!"
"Shut up!" Daniel’s voice was a whip-crack in the dark.
I pulled Noah down behind a massive granite boulder in the center of the creek bed. We sank into the freezing water until only our noses and eyes were above the waterline, the icy current swirling around our ears.
Through the gap between two river stones, I watched them.
Daniel was holding an old pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun—the Remington 870 he kept in the garage for duck hunting. His face was smeared with black soot, his button-down shirt torn open at the collar, his eyes wild and scanning the darkness with predatory fury.
"They didn't go out the front," Daniel said, his breathing ragged but calculated. "The police were already at the gate. If they ran, they ran downhill toward the creek. Sarah knows this trail. She took Noah down here to hunt for quartz stones every summer."
"Who gives a damn about Sarah?!" Marcus shrieked, clutching his right shoulder where a dark, wet stain was spreading across his jacket—a grazing wound from the police crossfire at the driveway. "We have to ditch the truck and get across the county line! If the feds get involved—"
"If Sarah reaches a hospital, we are dead anyway!" Daniel bellowed, stepping directly into his brother's face, the steel barrel of the shotgun gleaming in the moonlight. "The blood tests will show the chloral hydrate! They'll subpoena the offshore trust records! Everything we did, everything we spent—it all comes out! The only way we survive this is if she drowns in this creek tonight!"
He racked the shotgun slide.
CLACK-CLACK.
The sound echoed off the stone walls of the creek bed, heavy, metallic, and absolute.
"Spread out," Daniel commanded. "Watch the water. Look for the ripples."
Marcus whimpered, but he pulled a heavy tactical flashlight from his truck’s glove box, clicking it on. The beam sliced through the darkness, sweeping across the surface of the creek fifty yards upstream from where we hid.
Noah was trembling so violently that I had to wedge my body between his chest and the stone to keep his teeth from rattling against the granite. His lips were completely white, his skin clammy. Hypothermia was setting in; five more minutes in this freezing runoff and his body would shut down.
We couldn't stay in the creek.
And we couldn't run downstream; the current was too loud, our splashing would give us away within three seconds.
I looked at the steep embankment behind us.
An ancient white pine had fallen during a spring flood years ago, its massive root ball ripped from the bank, leaving a deep, dark cavern carved into the red clay above the waterline. The overhang was draped in trailing blackberry brambles and wild ivy.
I tapped Noah’s shoulder twice.
I pointed toward the root ball.
He understood. He didn't ask questions. Moving with the silent, fluid grace of a hunted fawn, he slid from behind the boulder, keeping his belly pressed flat against the mud, crawling out of the icy water and into the shadow of the clay bank.
I followed, dragging myself through the silt.
The thorny blackberry vines tore into my palms and raked across my forearms, dragging lines of hot fire through my flesh, but I didn't stop until we were wedged deep into the hollow behind the root ball. The smell was rich with damp earth, fungus, and wet animal fur.
We curled together in the pitch black, our breath mingling in small, silent puffs of white vapor.
Through the curtain of tangled roots, the beam of Marcus’s flashlight swept across the water.
Splash. Splash. Splash.
Footsteps. Heavy, unhurried boots stepping into the gravel shallows of the creek bed.
Daniel was walking down the center of the stream.
He had the shotgun resting across his forearm, his eyes fixed on the mud banks. He was reading the ground like an experienced hunter tracking a wounded deer.
He stopped ten paces from our root ball.
The flashlight beam from the logging road flickered over his shoulder, illuminating his profile. His jaw was set in that rigid, familiar line he used when he was balancing an audit ledger—cold, devoid of malice, entirely mechanical. He was simply balancing an account. We were debits that needed to be zeroed out.
His boot nudged the water.
Then, his gaze dropped to the mud shelf right in front of our hiding spot.
A footprint.
The clear, distinct waffle-pattern of Noah’s running shoe, pressed deeply into the gray clay where he had scrambled out of the stream.
Daniel’s head tilted slightly.
A terrible, faint smile curved the corner of his lips.
"Sarah," he said softly.
His voice was so close I could hear the whistle of air passing through his nostrils.
"I know you're tired, Sarah. It's cold. The chloral hydrate makes your limbs feel heavy, doesn't it? It makes your chest ache."
He took two slow, liquid steps toward the root ball. The water lapped against his calves.
"You always were too stubborn," he murmured, raising the shotgun to his shoulder, pointing the barrel directly at the blackberry brambles concealing our faces. "You should have just stayed asleep on the tile. It would have been peaceful. You wouldn't have felt the heat."
Noah shut his eyes, burying his face into the hollow of my throat.
I reached down to my waistband.
My fingers didn't find a weapon. They found the frozen, quart-sized plastic freezer bag containing the pork medallion and the rosemary glaze. The plastic was slick, covered in condensation, but the meat inside had frozen into an irregular, heavy, rock-hard block.
I wrapped both hands around the top of the bag.
Daniel took one more step. The muzzle of the twelve-gauge parted the trailing ivy vines, the black steel circle hovering eighteen inches from my forehead.
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"Goodbye, Sarah."
His finger tightened on the trigger.
