Page 54 of Silent Prey

“I’m warning you!” she said, her voice shaking. “Don’t get any closer! I’ll—”

He lunged. Sheila thrust the stick forward, but the man grabbed it and yanked it from her grasp. He tossed it aside.

Sheila watched in horror as her only weapon was discarded like a child's toy. She was defenseless, suspended over the man who looked at her with what might have been amusement. He stood upright now, dusting his hands on his blood-stained coyote skin like a businessman straightening his tie.

"Hush now," he said, his voice a guttural purr that made Sheila's skin crawl. "It'll be over soon."

Fear turned to rage within her. She had been a fighter all her life, raised by two parents who didn’t know what giving up even meant. She wasn’t about to back down now.

Composing herself, she scanned the undergrowth for her fallen sidearm. Where had it gone?

The man shuffled closer. Time seemed to slow as a chill swept through Sheila, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

Then she saw it, wedged precariously in a fork in the tree. Her sidearm.

If she could just swing herself toward it, maybe…

“I’ll still find her, you know,” the man said. “Beverly King. She can’t have gone far. And if by some miracle she’s managed to get help—well, I still have you, don’t I?” He smiled, revealing crooked, yellowed teeth. He was now standing right beside the gun without knowing it. There was no way Sheila would be able to grab the weapon while he was standing there.

“The animals,” she murmured, trying to keep him talking, stalling for time. “Snake, badger, sheep, coyote—you just like killing things, don’t you?”

His eyes sparkled. “Oh, it’s more sophisticated than that. I’d expect you’d know by now, being a detective and all.” He clucked his tongue.

Sheila said nothing. If she could just find a way to get him to move, to give her room to swing over to the weapon…

“Man may be at the top of the food chain,” the man said in a tone that suggested he was climbing up on his soapbox, “but he’s part of the food chain, nonetheless. That’s why I leave the animals with the women—to show the world that we’re animals, too. We’re not above the circle of life and death. We're all just pieces of the same puzzle.”

Sheila clenched her teeth as a wave of dizziness passed over her. “Cycle,” she said. “It’s ‘cycle,’ not ‘circle.’”

He grunted. “Either way, it's all the same. We kill or be killed."

“Who hurt you?”

“What?” He sounded baffled.

“Someone must have hurt you for you to turn into what you are. Who was it? Your parents?”

The man said nothing for several long moments. Sheila couldn’t see his face, but she had the impression he didn’t like the question.

“You know nothing about me,” he growled.

“So tell me. I’m what you call a captive audience.”

The forest was silent. Then the man laughed. “Captive audience! Yes, that’s about right. I suppose you want me to tell you all about how my mother beat me, how she drove me out into the wilderness and left me there for days? How my father left the day I was born, and I never heard from him again?”

"Is that what happened?" Sheila asked. She wasn’t particularly interested in the answer at the moment, but if she could just keep him talking, if she could just get him to move around, maybe she would get her chance to grab the gun.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said. “But I’m not some insect to be placed under a microscope and studied. You don’t get to look down on me, act like you know me when you’ve never walked a single mile in my shoes.”

“Maybe I haven’t. Still, your mother sounds like a cruel person. It must have been terrible, what you went through."

The man stepped toward her, leaning close. His breath reeked. “She was cruel, yes. But not as cruel as I am.”

Sheila forced herself to stare into the man’s eyes. "Is that why you're doing all of this?" she asked, her voice trembling but still strong. "To prove you're more cruel than your mother? To prove that you're...what? The biggest baddest predator in the food chain?”

Without a word, he drew a long knife, its blade glinting menacingly under the moonlight. The sharp tool traced the length of her cheek, pressing just hard enough to draw a bead of blood.

“Stop talking about my mother,” he said, his eyes gleaming with a dangerous rage. “You’re in no position to judge who I am.”

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