Run.
Hide.
Which?
Hayley was too panicked to make a rational decision, but the decision was made for her when terror propelled her forward, thrashing through the woods and the undergrowth. Between gasping breaths that exploded out of her chest, she heard someone running through the woods with the same abandon as she had. Howie was behind her, chasing her.
It was impossible to run fast in the clunking army boots and they made her clumsy so that she tripped over a tree root and sprawled on her belly in the leaves and dirt. Scrambling to her feet, she hunkered down behind the tree trunk, trying to get her breath.
Howie was a wild man. He wasn’t just chasing her. He was yelling, screaming, howling in pain. Garbled words rode his screams. Obscenities. Threats. Anger … rage!
There was blind hate in the voice screaming out of the throat of the man whose child she carried “beneath her heart.” If he caught up with her, he would kill her.
Even without the bulk of the army boots, Hayley couldn’t run fast. She was a hundred— okay, a hundred-fifty pounds overweight and she couldn’t move fast no matter how hard she tried, not hauling all that weight around.
But Howie had a bad knee. He couldn’t run fast on it or it would fall out from under him.
Could she outrun him if he saw her?
She didn’t know—
And then she found out.
He had changed direction, had spotted her behind the tree and was coming right at her,
“Arrgggg, you whore. I’ll kill you.”
Hayley bolted, trailing the raging man and his screams behind her like the tail on a kite.
Now that he’d spotted her, she couldn’t get far enough ahead of him, couldn’t run fast enough to get out of his sight and hide. She would have to escape him by outrunning him. And Hayley Norman didn’t believe that was possible.
Her heart was banging so hard her whole face pulsed with each beat. She was slathered in sweat, her hair pasted to her forehead, her breathing rasping, gasping.
There was a stitch in her side that hurt so bad she could barely stand up, let alone continue to run. But she couldn’t stop. No matter how bad it hurt, she couldn’t stop. The trees in front of her seemed to be thinning out, and that would make it easier going. But it would be easier for him to see her, too. In the fading light, the shadows of trees had offered some concealment, but in the open—
Then she realized why the trees were thinning. Up ahead of her was a logging road. The woods were full of them. It would meander down to Crockett Pike, and the turnoff to the parking space in the woods. If she took the road it would literally become a footrace. Could she get down it, into her car and away before Howie caught up with her?
Or should she stay in the woods, veer off to the right or left, make it harder for him to keep up with her on that bum knee? If she could elude him for a while longer, it would be dark. If she could just stay out of his grasp that long, he would never find her in the woods—
A truck.
There was a pickup truck on the road. Hayley couldn’t run anymore. The best she could do was stagger, her breathing a gasping wheeze, bent over the stitch in her side, but the truck was driving slowly, which was the only way you could drive on a logging road full of gigantic potholes.
Who could possibly be out here in the woods on a logging road at twilight?
She didn’t care who it was, she had to catch them. Had to get in front of them before they passed by, flag them down, plead with them for help.
Now it was a race. Not only away from Howie behind her but toward the pickup truck ahead. If it made the next bend before she got out of the trees and onto the road where she could be seen, the driver would pass unknowingly by and she would have lost all chance to flag him down. She didn’t have enough air to cry out for help. She just had to get to the road before the truck passed.
Had to.
Thirty feet now.
Twenty.
Fifteen.
She was going to make it!
Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She frantically shook off the hand and lurched forward. But then Howie grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked her backwards off her feet. She flew through the air and landed in a bone-jarring heap on the forest floor.
She looked up then into his face and it was a ruined horror. She screamed, shrieked, cried out in terror at the top of her lungs. Except she didn’t. She couldn’t get in enough air to breathe, let alone scream. The sound she made, terror and rage, rang out only in her head.
Howie’s mouth was nothing but a bloody gash in his face, pouring gore down his chin. His nose was broken and bleeding and four deep cuts slashed down his left cheek — more than mere scratches. Where she’d clawed him with her fingernails looked like he’d been mauled by a bear.
He stood over her, panting, spewing out a spray of blood at her as he gasped for air, trying to catch his breath. She rolled over, tried to stand, but he tackled her, literally leapt on her back and used his weight to crush her down in the dirt beneath him.
He was coughing, gasping in her ear, almost-words, obscenities, hatred. He moved enough to yank her over onto her back so that the gore of his face was dripping directly into hers. He clamped his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and she struggled in panic, couldn’t get in enough air through her nose. So she bit him as hard as she could, got the side of his thumb in her mouth and bit all the way to the bone. She could feel it with her teeth. He yanked backward in agony, would have screamed if he’d had enough breath. She heard the truck approaching and shoved at Howie with all her strength, wiggling and kicking out with her feet and hands.
Off balance, he toppled off her to the right and she scrambled to her feet and staggered the final fifteen feet to the edge of the trees and out into the road. The truck had just passed, leaving a wake of dust in the air, but the driver would see her standing there, swaying in the road when he looked in his rearview mirror.
When he looked back …
If he looked …
But he didn’t. The pickup truck turned the final bend at the top of the hill and disappeared.
She heard Howie behind her and she turned. He was making a sound that might have been laughter. He had a broken tree limb the size of a baseball bat in his hand. He swung it at her head. She tried to duck, but she wasn’t quick enough.
Then the world went black.