Page 109 of Silent Threat
Annie’s heart raced. “You can’t shoot him. You’ll be caught.”
He turned. “Murder-suicide. Nobody will be surprised, considering his family history. Everybody will think Trevor’s death pushed him over the edge. If anything, it’ll be blamed on you for having an affair with a patient. Cole snapped, he killed you, then he killed himself.” Disappointment crept into his voice, as if she were a slow student.
He added, “Technically, I’ll shoot him first. Then we’re going to finish our date. No more teasing. You are going to give me everything you’ve given to him. Then I’m going to take whatever else I need.”
Fear roiled in Annie’s stomach. She needed to get away from here. If she ran, Dan would come after her. He wouldn’t be here to kill Cole when Cole arrived. And she might be able to get away from Dan. She knew these woods.
She considered the sheets of rain outside—limited visibility. That was in her favor, if she ran. But to run, she’d have to reach the ground first. If she was too slow on the ladder, Dan would catch her before she was halfway down the tree.
Could she jump? The blind was fifteen feet or so up.
The ground below is soft mud.
Her choices were either to jump out of the blind and maybe break something, or stay and face certain death. And if she didn’t do anything, Cole would be killed too.
Annie went for it, pushing herself up then over the half wall in one uncoordinated vault.
She slammed into a puddle, the air knocked out of her, rain beating on her face.
“Annie!” Dan roared above.
She didn’t stay down long enough to determine if she’d broken anything. She pushed to her shaking hands and knees and scrambled toward the nearest stand of bushes, then through them, ignoring the skin she scraped off in the process.
She tripped. She sprang up and ran bent over for another few feet before she straightened. When she glanced back, she could barely make out the blind. She didn’t see Dan.
She ran in lurching, sliding strides toward Hope Hill.
“Annie!”
If she wasn’t so scared, she would have smiled. Dan was still behind her.
Good.
She wanted him to think that he could catch her. She didn’t want him to give up and go back to lie in wait for Cole.
She ran, but not too fast, to lure Dan farther away.
Cole spent way too much time locating the deer blind.Empty.
Somebodyhadbeen here, though—muddy footprints covered the floorboards, and there were more footprints at the base of the tree.
He pulled out his LED light and examined the prints close-up, squatting down and dragging his fingers in the indentations. The churned-up mud betrayed a lot of slipping and sliding. Had they been struggling? Had Annie escaped Ambrose?
Cole took off, following the prints.
He couldn’t hear the rain, but he could hear some of the thunder when lightning crackled across the sky. He used every second of that light to scan the forest in front of him. How far ahead of him were they?
Where Cole saw prints, he followed them, and where puddles covered the tracks, he chose the easiest path. Annie would want to get away from Ambrose as fast as she could. She’d be running for the openings in the vegetation, probably back toward the main track, back toward Hope Hill.
When he wasn’t scanning the ground, he was scanning the bushes for a scrap of fabric, hair, blood—any indication that he was on the right path.
A full ten minutes passed before he finally had to admit that he’d lost their track.
He roared his frustration into the storm.
Then he backtracked and tried again.
Annie ran forward in the dark, so wet and cold her teeth chattered. She’d run far enough now, she thought, so that Dan wouldn’t be able to find his way back to the blind if he gave up and turned around. Cole was safe.
