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Horror clawed at her throat. The night became a witness to the unspeakable. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be.
"Help!" Her voice, ragged and raw, tore through the silence. She stood, spinning in desperation, seeking an adversary that remained unseen. "Somebody help us!"
Her hands knotted into fists, nails biting into her palms as she willed herself to act, to move, to undo this somehow. But the world was indifferent, the tunnel across the road a gaping maw that swallowed her cries.
"Please!" The scream shattered the quiet, a desperate sound that ricocheted off the trees, hunting for ears that might never hear it. "She's... she's..."
But there was no denying the stillness that mocked her panic. The trucker ay motionless, a broken doll discarded by cruel fate, her story ending in a question mark that hung over them, thick with impending doom.
The woman's knees buckled, her own safety a fragile bubble ready to burst. The echo of her terror bounced back to her, a chilling reminder that they were alone—but for how long?
And then she heard it.
She was certain she heard it.
Coming from the dark. Moving through the trees.
She'd been a fool to think she could outrun it.
She wept as she stumbled away on mud-slicked feet, bloodied and worn.
It was coming.
She wanted to run, but which direction? Where was it? Her scream tore the night.
CHAPTER ONE
Rachel Blackwood's silhouette cut a sharp contrast against the crumbling brickwork as she lingered just outside the reach of the first rays of morning sunlight, sitting in the front seat of her unmarked vehicle. The sun hung low, casting an amber hue over the faded facade of Pablo Gerhardt's residence. Her thumb scrolled through the glowing screen of her phone, tracing the contours of a digital dossier.
"Gerhardt, Pablo," she muttered under her breath, her voice barely piercing the hush of the street. "Known associate of Benny Carter. Small-time." She frowned from under the brim of her white Stetson hat, the two red feathers fluttering where they jutted from the brim.
She didn't like the sidewalk or concrete.
She didn't like big, fancy homes with wrought iron gates.
It felt so... unnatural.
She missed the woods, nature. She missed the sound of creatures rustling through the brush that a trained ear could pick up on.
Out here?
The scent was diesel and asphalt. The sounds were automotive or construction. It did a soul well to avoid the city.
But something even more important than well-being had drawn her in the morning hours before work.
A photograph trapped within the confines of her screen betrayed no secrets, showcasing a man who seemed to perpetually sneer at a world he felt owed him something. Rachel's eyes narrowed slightly, studying his features as if they might suddenly unravel the enigma of her past.
Her mind recoiled, spiraling back to her interrogation of the man who'd broken into her parents' boarded-up home. Benny Carter's gruff tone whispered like a ghost in her memory.
"Your folks," Benny had said, "they played us all for fools. They took the money and ran!"
Rachel's fist clenched involuntarily, the device in her hand protesting with a soft creak. The image of her parents, forever frozen in that last, carefree moment before their disappearance, flashed across her inner eye—a cruel taunt from fate.
"Vanished," she whispered to herself, tasting the bitterness of the word. And according to Benny, they hadn't gone alone. Rather, they'd disappeared along with a billion dollars that never belonged to them.
It was the first she'd heard of it. Her parents, criminals?
She didn't believe it?
