Page 68

Ash leanedon his makeshift walking stick, a branch he’d picked up near a narrow ribbon of creek twenty yards back. A creek he didn’t recall seeing on his way to the kill site.

A heaviness had settled in his legs and his toes felt as though he’d climbed Mt. Everest barefoot. Even more concerning in his catalog of aches and pains was the clammy film of sweat coating his body and his inability to feel his shoulder.

The copious sweat indicated his body was going into shock. Not good. The numbness he didn’t even want to think about.

Instead, he scanned the darkened woods for the hundredth time, looking for familiar landmarks or signs of civilization. But a light mist was rolling through the landscape, obscuring everything and plastering his clothes to his body.

He was one hundred percent lost.

Where had he gone wrong? Should he retrace his steps? Or forge ahead?

If he made the wrong decision, Kayla could pay for it with her life. An unfamiliar paralysis kept his barely functioning feet rooted in place. His heart clamored in his chest, and the earth shifted on its axis without warning.

He spread his feet and closed his eyes until the wave of dizziness passed.

A cool breeze whipped between the stark tree trunks, sending the nimble branches overhead dancing and hurrying along the foggy mist.

The impenetrable gray cleared for several heartbeats, long enough for him to spot a twinkle of light in the distance. He wiped the moisture from his face, squinted through the ever-shifting fog.

He wasn’t seeing things. That was artificial light high on the ridge.

Adrenaline surged through his weakened body, and he scrambled up what had to be a forty percent gradient slope. He didn’t think about it, didn’t worry about how he looked as he clawed, hands and toes, his way toward the light.

The only thing that mattered was getting to a phone and stopping Elsie from murdering Kayla and her mother.

About halfway up, the terrain leveled out and the crunch beneath his boots no longer belonged to layers of leaf litter but to gravel.

Through heaving breaths, he glanced left, then right.

He’d found the trail.

Relief pulsed through him, then quickly stalled out.

Which way? The wrong choice would cost him precious time.

Before he could make a decision, two black-clad figures appeared above him on the trail. Assault rifles locked against their shoulders.

Elsie must have sent reinforcements when his executioners had failed to check in. Given their high alert stance, they’d heard him crawling up the embankment.

“Stay where you are,” one of the men ordered.

Once again, he had no cover. The scattered trees along the trail were barely thick enough to hide a child let alone a grown man.

But this time, he was unbound and armed. All he needed to do was survive the next few seconds.

Twin red dots flickered on his chest.

Ash made the only decision he could.

He dove off the edge of the trail.