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The fact that someone was in their car camping really wasn’t out of the norm, but it was for this part of the park. Normally they only allowed RVs on this side due to the high demand of spots—even in the winter.
At least, that was what the park manager had informed me when I’d brought the RV down.
When I’d asked to rent out the RV spot next to me, too, he’d shook his head and said that most of the time that one was left open anyway in case the campground owners wanted to come down—which they normally didn’t during the holidays.
So needless to say, I was surprised to see someone parked there. I was also not happy that it was a man camping out of his car.
Finally untangling my headphones, I plugged them into my phone and fitted them into my ear.
Stopping on the side of the road to stretch my calves, I took a look around the sleepy grounds and wondered if everyone there was planning on staying through the holidays next week.
There were four or five older couples that had been here just as long as I had been, but there were also three elderly men that were by themselves that had come in just last week.
I didn’t ever have time to stop and talk to them, so I didn’t know their stories, but I doubted that they lived close based solely on their license plates.
How many of them would leave in four days so they could go home for Thanksgiving? How many would stay?
Switching to the opposite leg, I reached up and tightened my ponytail and looked to the side as I did.
My belly clenched when I saw the man walking toward me.
Quickly looking down so I didn’t make eye contact—thank God I’d already put the headphones in so he wouldn’t talk to me—I waited for him to pass.
When he did finally pass—which was way slower than I thought it ought to have been—I decided to start running in the opposite direction.
I made it a mile and a quarter before I caught up to the man again.
He’d stopped at another empty campground and was facing the opposite way—the way I would’ve originally been coming from. Meaning I got a very good look at the man as I came up on him, and there was nothing about him that really made him distinguishable.
Brown hair, medium build and tall, black clothes and black shoes. His skin was tanned, but the only part of it I could see—his face and his hands—weren’t remarkable.
Keeping my head down as I passed him, I had to fight my instincts to look over my shoulder at the man as I decided that the end of my run had drawn near.
With that man out there, my instincts were humming.
Worse, I could tell that when I passed, he’d definitely noticed.
I was also fairly sure that he was now following.
Belly in a clench for the last quarter of a mile, I pushed it a lot harder than I normally would have and arrived back at my RV just as I was fairly sure I might die.
I wasn’t a runner.
Even more so, I wasn’t athletic, period. Pairing those two things together meant that I was fairly awful at working out.
However, I’d finally broken ten minutes on my mile, and I was happy.
At one point in time, that would’ve never been possible for me.
I was just rounding the back of the RV, finally taking a look behind me to see if the man was as close as I feared—he was. He was gaining fast, as if he was running to keep up now.
With my eyes on him, I didn’t see the dark, looming figure that was hiding in the shadows until my brother caught me as I started to fall over him.
“Shit!” I cried out, scared out of my mind.
“Chill the fuck out,” Bud muttered. “Why are you running in the dark, you dumbass?”
Hearing my brother’s words had me deflating.
In more than one way.
Seconds after he set me to the side and made sure that I was stable, I once again threw myself at him.
He caught me and allowed me to wrap myself around him, despite my sweaty state.
He only held me and rubbed my back as I cried into his neck.
“It’ll be okay, Sissy,” he whispered. “We’ll get through this.”
He didn’t sound convinced, just like I wasn’t.
But I had a feeling he was right.
We would get through this.
It’d be tough—the toughest thing we’d ever done since we were both so very close to my mother—but we’d do it.
“I know,” I admitted. “I’m just scared. I’m sad. I’m a lot of things.”
He grunted in reply. Then suddenly stiffened.
“Can I help you?” my brother drawled.
I looked up to find him staring at the man that was once again at his campground, this time standing next to his car watching us.
