Page 126 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
Diverging course when my only concern should be the safety of Alicia and Lucy.
There were no lights on inside, and I moved forward, going first for the door. I pressed down on the latch, making sure it was locked, before I crept around the entire perimeter, checking that the windows were locked and untampered with.
Clear.
Still, there was something in my guts that had me itching.
I pulled out my phone and made the call to Kiel, my security guard on duty tonight. He answered on the first ring. “Yo, man, what’s up?”
It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to hearing from me in the middle of the night.
“Anything out of sorts?”
“Did a full perimeter twenty minutes ago. Everything was clear.”
“Just…keep an extra eye.”
“Something up?” he asked.
I warred, wondering if I was losing a piece of my rationality. If that piece of me that was getting stuck on Unit B might be fucking with my senses.
“Nah. Think everything is good. I’m just going to do a sweep of the back lot.”
“Will take an extra jaunt around the front,” he said.
“Good.” I ended the call just as I swore something flickered in my periphery to the left.
A glimmer of light coming from within the trees.
I swung my beam that way, and I squinted as I peered into the forest.
That sense struck me again, and I could barely make out what looked like a bare glint against the snow.
Heart jumping into my throat, I took off in that direction. Feet pounding against the pavement before I belted into the snowbank that hedged the woods.
My boots sank deep, but I propelled myself forward, fumbling through it and up into the line of the trees where the snow was shallower.
I swept my flashlight back and forth, trying to pick up the trail of whatever I’d seen.
Jagged breaths jutted from my aching lungs as I hurtled through the tortuous terrain. Weaving around the trunks and ducking beneath the branches.
Searching for anything.
For any sign.
Nothing.
There was only the sense that I was trailing something evil.
The stench of wickedness riding on the harsh, cutting gusts of wind.
Alicia and Lucy’s faces flashed behind my mind. Sickness gripped me as I thought of that monster finding them.
Piper’s face was right behind it. The scars I discovered on her back a trigger at the back of my brain.
What if it was someone after her?
I increased my pace, near frantic as I ran through the forest, ducking against the violent lash of the storm.
