Page 1 of Not This Soon

PROLOGUE

Rebecca Morris's boots crunched on the coarse desert sand. The night air hung heavy, pressing against her skin. Darkness stretched in every direction, broken only by the faint glow of starlight. The headlights from the red hatchback she’d driven glowed dimly behind her, spotlighting her silhouette and casting it as an inky smear across the arid landscape. She gripped her phone tighter, the anonymous tip burning in her mind.

"This better be worth it," she muttered, scanning the barren landscape.

Her heart raced with anticipation. This could be the story that would make her career. But doubt gnawed at her. What if it was all a wild goose chase?

Rebecca pushed forward, each step deliberate. The promise of revelation drove her onward. Her notepad bounced against her hip with every stride. She'd come prepared to document everything.

If illegal dumping reallywashappening in this barren land, it could be just the story her editor would showcase on the main page. This was the curse of a journalist's life. A lot of times, one's career depended on stumbling upon the horror that others overlooked, the underside of truth that lurked in the shadows.

She stumbled over an outcrop of rock, quickly steadying herself. Sweat prickled at the base of her neck, trickling down her spine. The night had a deathly stillness to it, a silence that seemed to swallow her very thoughts.

Her phone beeped, pulling her out of her musings. An incoming text message is displayed on the screen. A string of coordinates; her destination. She squinted at the numbers, cross-referencing them with the GPS app she'd downloaded specifically for tonight.

A low hiss slithered into her ears unseen in the darkness. She froze, heart pounding against her ribs. A shiver traced down her spine as the quiet hiss turned into an ominous rattle.

"Shit," Rebecca muttered, recognizing the sound instantly: a rattlesnake.

The creature slithered across the path in front of her, beady eyes peering out into the night, fixated on her, their dark, lidless gaze staring directly at her.

Her skin prickled with fear, the chill of terror creeping up her legs. She was no stranger to Texas fauna, yet a face-to-face encounter with a venomous snake in the middle of nowhere was not something she was prepared for.

She backed away slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements that might provoke the snake into striking. Its rattle continued to reverberate through the silent night air, a grim warning before the danger.

Seeking solace in what little knowledge she had of these deadly creatures, Rebecca remembered that rattlesnakes were more afraid of humans than humans were of them. The hissing stopped abruptly as if the reptile had read her thoughts, but it didn’t slither away. Its gaze remained glued to hers, its forked tongue flickering out intermittently.

She wasn’t a superstitious person but her brow furrowed and she vaguely wondered if perhaps this was a warning.

She gave the snake a wide berth as she trudged down the faint trail in the arid space.

Occasionally, she shot glances back at the creature, eyes fixated on the slithering monster but after a few seconds, the headlights of her sedan timed out, casting the trail in darkness.

Somehow, this was worse.

Now, she couldn’tseethe slithering threat. Cursing, she pulled her phone out, turning on the light and illuminating the ground in front of her.

Every fissured patch of mud or discarded stick gave her pause, and she felt her heart skip as she navigated this path of obstacles. She double-checked the anonymous texts she’d received over the last few days, scanning through the information, her eyes wide.

The coordinates led to a place deeper into the desert; an abandoned mineshaft that supposedly held barrels of illegally dumped chemicals. This information could be the key to exposing a major corporation's dirty secret. Rebecca pushed forward, driven by a single-minded pursuit of truth… and more than a little career ambition.

A gust of wind kicked up sand. Rebecca shielded her eyes, squinting into the gloom. Nothing but endless dunes and scrub brush. She checked her phone again. No signal. Signal. No signal.

It kept slipping in and out.

"Dammit," she whispered under her breath, raising the phone to try and catch a better signal.

A sudden rustling sound froze Rebecca in her tracks. Her eyes darted left, then right. Nothing moved in the inky darkness.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice swallowed by the vast emptiness.

Silence answered. Then, a faint scrabbling. Like claws on stone. Rebecca's pulse quickened. She fumbled for her phone’s flashlight, trying to redirect the faint glow.

The beam cut through the night, revealing only sand scattered rocks, and occasional scrubby plants. But something flickered at the edge of the light. A shadow, there and gone in an instant.

Rebecca's breath caught. "Who's there?"

More silence. She took a hesitant step forward, then another. The flashlight beam danced across the desert floor, casting long shadows that seemed to writhe and twist.

---