Page 9 of Not This Night

And now, it was the scent that caught her attention.

She hesitated, pushing back the brim of her hat, her expression as impassive as always.

She inhaled and wrinkled her nose.

Decay.

Fetid meat—the odor lingering on the quietly creaking homes’ stagnant air.

She moved along the second floor, one hand trailing the banister as she pushed off, her fingers flexing, ready to pull her sidearm at a moment’s notice.

She didn’t glance side to side, as she found a steady gaze allowed her to notice movement out of her peripheral vision.

Room by room, she swept the second floor. Empty. Abandoned. Until she reached the last door, paint chipped and handle loose.

She eased it open.

The last door creaked, a reluctant guardian giving way. Rachel stepped into the gloom, her eyes adjusting. A shaft of light cut through the broken window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Then she saw it.

A badger, a dead one at that, its belly ripped open with savage precision. Even in its mutilated state, she recognized the creature instantly.

The sight arrested her, the metallic scent of blood a sharp note in the musty room. Her hand hovered over her mouth, stifling the instinctive reaction to the odor and the carnage.

"Damn," she muttered under her breath, approaching the carcass. This wasn't nature's work. This was man-made brutality. She crouched beside the animal, studying the jagged edges where flesh met air.

Her mind whirred. The gouges spoke to her, told a story she knew by heart. She'd seen similar wounds before, in the forested outskirts where her youth had been spent tracking, learning.

The badger’s paw had been caught in a type of trap known as a conibear trap. A cruel and indiscriminate device that closed with deadly force, meant for larger animals but capable of suffocating smaller creatures like the badger that lay before her.

Rachel straightened, feeling a shiver of rage. This wasn't just a meaningless death, but a symbol.

Rachel could picture it—the steel jaws, the chain. It wasn't meant for a creature this size. It was overkill. Her fingers traced the air above the wound, careful not to contaminate the scene.

And if the killer had access to such tools, what else were they capable of?

Rachel stood, stepping back from the badger. Her gaze swept the room. She needed to see beyond the immediate. She needed to understand the connection.

She swept her gaze across the worn floorboards, looking for disturbances, imprints left behind by careless feet or a dragged heel. Years of tracking fugitives had honed her senses, and she read rooms like others read books—a story in every scuff, a secret in each shadow.

"Come on," she muttered under her breath, willing the evidence to speak. The air was thick, almost palpable, as if it too held its breath, waiting for her to uncover what lurked beneath its surface.

Then, her eyes snagged on something—scuff marks near the window. A disrupted arc in the dust and grime that shouldn't be there. Pulse quickening, Rachel crouched by the disturbance.

"Hello, what's this?" Her fingertips hovered above the marred ground, tracing the lines without touching. She noted the pattern, the directionality of the marks. They spoke of haste, of a sudden shift, a pivot.

And there, the window—ajar. It hung crooked on its hinges, a sliver of the outside world peeking through the gap. She leaned in, nose almost touching the splintered wood, inspecting the latch. It bore scratches, fresh metal gleaming from under a paint fleck. Forced open. Recently.

Rachel’s nostrils flared as she inhaled, searching for a scent, a clue carried on the air. But it was just the musty tang of neglect and the faint, coppery smell of old blood that tickled her senses. Only silence answered her unspoken questions.

Rachel crouched low, her gaze slicing through the broken pane. The landscape sprawled before her—a canvas of dry sand and withered grass. Wind whispered secrets across the barren expanse. And there it was—the faintest disturbance in the earth's crust, a trail of dirt snaking away from the house.

Across the roof of the adjoining shed first. She could see bent aluminum. Someone had climbed the shed to reach the second floor, then come this way.

Tracks.

The pattern was irregular, too heavy for an animal, too erratic for the wind. Human. Her pulse quickened.

Rachel’s breath hitched, and then she climbed through the window, stepping cautiously across the shed’s flimsy aluminum roof, and then dropped onto the far more comfortable and familiar ground.

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