Page 30 of Close By (Kari Blackhorse #1)

Redford lunged forward with inhuman speed, one hand gripping Kari’s wounded arm while the other went straight for her throat.

The impact drove Kari backward, stones skittering beneath her boots as she fought for balance at the ravine’s edge.

Her service weapon, still in her right hand, was pinned awkwardly between their bodies, impossible to aim.

Redford’s fingers tightened around Kari’s windpipe, cutting off air with shocking strength. Darkness began to creep in at the edges of Kari’s vision as she struggled to break free, her lungs burning.

“The transition begins,” Redford whispered, her face inches from Kari’s, the mask’s hollow eyes seeming to stare directly into her soul. “Let it happen. Let me out.”

Kari’s free hand scrabbled desperately at her jacket pocket, fingers closing around Ruth’s medicine pouch. Without conscious thought, she pulled it free, pressing it against Redford’s face with her last reserves of strength.

The effect was instantaneous and unexpected. Redford recoiled as if burned, her grip on Kari’s throat slackening. Something like recognition flickered in her eyes—confusion, fear, a momentary return of the academic beneath the monster.

“What—” Redford gasped, her voice suddenly her own again. “What is that?”

Kari didn’t waste the opening, twisting violently to break free.

The sudden movement sent both women stumbling dangerously close to the ravine’s edge.

Stones broke loose beneath their feet, tumbling into darkness.

Kari’s service weapon slipped from her grasp in the struggle, clattering across the rock before sliding over the precipice, lost to the depths below.

Disarmed but momentarily free, Kari fought to regain stable footing, clutching the medicine pouch like a talisman. The moment of clarity in Redford’s eyes was already fading, the predatory presence reasserting itself with frightening speed.

“No more distractions,” Redford snarled, slapping the pouch out of Kari’s hand. “No escape now.”

“Redford!” A new voice cut through the night—authoritative, familiar.

Daniels stood twenty yards away, his service weapon trained on Redford, stance perfect, face a mask of professional control. “FBI! Drop the knife and step away from Detective Blackhorse!”

Redford froze, head tilting at that unnatural angle as she assessed this new threat. For a heartbeat, Kari thought the professor might actually surrender and might let whatever momentary clarity the medicine pouch had triggered take hold.

Instead, Redford laughed—a sound that raised the hair on Kari’s arms.

“Another one,” she said with terrible delight. “The universe provides.”

Daniels frowned, as if he couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing—a small, middle-aged woman in academic attire, albeit wearing some kind of ceremonial mask.

His aim remained steady, but Kari recognized the hesitation in his eyes, the split second of disbelief that every cop experienced when reality didn’t match training scenarios.

That split second was all Redford needed.

She moved with the same unnatural speed she’d displayed earlier, covering the distance to Daniels before he could recover from his surprise. His shot went wide as Redford knocked his arm upward, the knife in her hand already slashing toward his throat.

Daniels blocked the blow with his forearm, wincing as the blade sliced through his jacket sleeve. His FBI training took over, and he moved to subdue what his brain still processed as a human assailant—a grip to control the knife hand, a sweep to unbalance her smaller frame.

But Redford wasn’t fighting like a human. She twisted with impossible flexibility, breaking his hold, her free hand closing around his wrist. She bent his arm at an angle that made him gasp in pain, his weapon clattering to the ground.

Kari circled to flank Redford while Daniels fought to free himself.

Daniels shifted tactics, abandoning standard restraint procedures for more decisive action, delivering a strike that should have incapacitated someone of Redford’s size.

She barely flinched.

Kari seized the moment to attack from behind, wrapping her arm around Redford’s throat in a control hold while trying to avoid the slashing knife. “The medicine pouch!” she shouted to Daniels. “Get the pouch from the ground!”

Daniels spotted the small leather bag where it had fallen in the struggle. He dove for it, rolling away from Redford’s kick and coming up with the pouch in hand.

“Now what?” he demanded, dodging another attack.

“Press it against her skin!” Kari tightened her hold as Redford bucked and twisted with terrifying strength.

Daniels didn’t hesitate this time, lunging forward to press the medicine pouch against Redford’s exposed forearm. Again, the effect was immediate—Redford’s body went rigid, a strangled sound escaping her throat. The knife fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

“Hold her!” Kari commanded, maintaining her grip while Daniels pressed the pouch firmly against Redford’s skin.

Between them, Redford convulsed, her body jerking as if caught between opposing forces.

The mask fell away, revealing her face contorted in a silent scream.

For several long seconds, the three of them formed a tableau of desperate struggle on the edge of the ravine—Kari and Daniels grimly holding on, Redford caught in some internal battle they could only glimpse.

Then, like a switch being flipped, Redford went limp between them. The unnatural strength evaporated, leaving only a small, exhausted woman who suddenly seemed every one of her fifty-plus years.

“What—” Redford’s voice was her own again, confused, frightened. “Where am I? What’s happening?”

Kari maintained her hold, unwilling to trust this apparent transformation. “Dr. Redford? Are you with us?”

“Detective Blackhorse?” Recognition dawned in Redford’s eyes, followed immediately by horror. “Oh god. It happened again, didn’t it? What did I do this time?”

Daniels was already retrieving his handcuffs, his expression grim.

“Elaine Redford, you’re under arrest for the murders of Mark Harrington, Rachel Delgado, and Alan Mitchell.

” He recited the Miranda warning automatically while securing her wrists, his training reasserting itself now that the immediate threat had passed.

Redford offered no resistance, her eyes vacant, shoulders slumped. “I tried to stop it,” she whispered. “For years, I tried. The medications didn’t work. Nothing worked except…”

“Except the ceremonies,” Kari finished for her. “You thought killing at sacred sites would cure you.”

“Transfer the Skinwalker,” Redford corrected distantly.

“Find a willing host who could contain it. Or destroy it completely through the proper ritual.” She looked up suddenly, eyes focusing on Kari with disturbing clarity.

“It’s still here, you know. Inside me. Waiting.

Whatever you did only pushed it back temporarily. ”

Daniels met Kari’s gaze over Redford’s head, his expression communicating volumes. Professional skepticism warred with what he’d just experienced firsthand—a slight academic displaying strength and speed that defied rational explanation.

“We’ve got backup two minutes out,” he said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “Let’s get her secured and transported.”

As they guided Redford away from the ravine’s edge, Kari retrieved the medicine pouch from where Daniels had dropped it during the final struggle. The small leather bag seemed unremarkable in the moonlight, yet it had affected Redford in a way no conventional weapon could have.

“Your service weapon,” Daniels said quietly as they walked, Redford docile between them. “What happened to it?”

“Lost over the edge during the fight,” Kari replied, gesturing toward the ravine. “We can recover it tomorrow in daylight.”

Daniels nodded, his gaze lingering on the medicine pouch in Kari’s hand. “That thing. What is it exactly?”

“My grandmother’s protection,” Kari said simply. She didn’t have a better explanation—not one that would make sense in an FBI report, anyway.

“Well,” Daniels said after a moment, “looks like your grandmother knew something the Bureau doesn’t.”

It was more of an acknowledgment than Kari had expected to get from him—recognition that some realities resisted standard profiles and procedural manuals. That some dangers came from places the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had never mapped.

Redford walked between them, head bowed, occasionally murmuring to herself in a language Kari didn’t recognize.

Whatever had possessed her—psychosis, delusion, or something the old stories named more directly—seemed dormant for now.

But Kari kept the medicine pouch close, unwilling to dismiss Redford’s warning.

It’s still here. Waiting.

Behind them, the sacred site stood silent under moonlight, the hand-shaped rock formation reaching toward stars that had witnessed countless ceremonies across millennia. Waiting, perhaps, for the next boundary to thin. The next crossing to be attempted.

Kari slipped the medicine pouch back into her pocket, feeling its weight against her side like a promise. A reminder that some protections came not from badges or service weapons, but from older, deeper knowledge that refused to be forgotten.

Knowledge her grandmother had tried to share all along.