Chapter Fifteen
Her ankle cracked to one side.
The rest of her followed a split second later.
Lettie hit the ground, her bandaged palms and wrists taking most of the impact as the air crushed out of her. She bit back the yelp filling her mouth. She couldn’t scream. Couldn’t cry from the pain. Couldn’t give him any kind of signal for her location.
She’d barely managed to catch her abductor by surprise when he’d tried to tie her legs together. She’d struck him dead center in the chest with everything she had. The kick had merely distracted him long enough for her to start running.
And she hadn’t stopped. Not in what felt like hours.
Her brain had stopped cataloguing major natural formations and plants to recall later, focused only on putting as much distance between them as possible.
She didn’t know where she was, how long she’d been running.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew the best chance of walking out of these woods alive meant staying in one place, but she couldn’t take the chance of him catching up.
Not when the memories of what’d happened to that hiker kept digging in deeper. She didn’t want to end up like that.
The waning sun had started cutting through the spaces between tree trunks rather than the canopy a little while ago.
Nighttime was coming. And she’d ditched her supplies in the roots of a tree before going back for Rome.
There was no telling where they were now, which meant there was a chance she’d freeze to death if she stayed out here much longer. But what other choice did she have?
Rome. Lettie pressed her upper body off the forest floor, rolling onto her back.
Her throat burned as she tried to catch her breath.
Was he all right? That arrow… She closed her eyes, willing to sink straight into the ground right here.
She could picture the wound so clearly, see the blood gushing from his shoulder.
There hadn’t been anything she could do to help.
Was he alive? Tears burned in her eyes, and she swiped at them with dirt-crusted hands.
Rome was the best hunter and outdoorsman in the country.
He’d make it through this. She had to believe that or her anxiety would tear her apart.
Move. She had to keep moving. Had to get to her supplies.
She’d packed a radio. She had her general location: East border of a section of open Zion backcountry.
She was sure of it based on the growth of the rough horsetail groves she’d passed.
She could hail into the search and rescue rangers, tell the superintendent what’d happened and have him send law enforcement officers to trail her attacker. She could get Rome help.
Okay. She could do that. Lettie took a deep breath, leveraging her weight onto her elbows.
Pain ricocheted through her ankle and up her calve as she flexed her toes.
Damn it. That rock had come out of nowhere.
She hadn’t had time to adjust before stepping down on the sharp point, and her ankle had paid the price.
The structure of her boots didn’t provide any support, and now her knee was screaming.
She must’ve landed on it when she’d hit the ground.
The tears rushed back. Every cell in her body urged her to collapse back, to give up and wait for help.
But help wouldn’t get to her in time. Not before other kinds of predators did.
She was just so…tired. Adrenaline had drained within minutes of fleeing the killer.
She had no idea how far she’d run, if she was headed in the right direction back to Rome.
The pain was getting worse, but she had to try.
Digging her fingernails into cold, red sand, Lettie hauled her upper body off the ground.
She grabbed for the hem of her pant leg.
Her ankle had already started swelling, deep marbling encircling where it’d bent at the unnatural angle.
It wasn’t broken. That much she could tell, but running was no longer an option.
She had to be strategic. Smarter than the man following her.
Her pulse thudded hard behind her ears, blocking out sounds of the wilderness around her. The sun had dipped lower, wildlife winding down for the night. She’d been lucky to avoid running into any other kind of animal that might make a meal of her, but that luck wouldn’t hold out.
She had to get to her supplies. She didn’t have any other choice.
“Larsons don’t stay down.” The family motto came easily enough, but the words grated against that internal space Rome had unknowingly carved out of her.
Where day by day throughout their marriage he’d allowed her to slowly unwind all the tension her upbringing had bred into her.
Where, up until six months ago, she’d felt safe.
Cared for. Seen. Where she didn’t always have to be the best or work the hardest, where she had no one to impress because he’d loved her without her degrees, promotions to head researcher and published articles.
Larsons didn’t stay down. Problem was, despite reverting to her maiden name, she hadn’t been a Larson in a long time. She didn’t know who she was anymore.
But she wouldn’t be prey.
Locking her jaw against the oncoming pain, Lettie got her good foot beneath her and shoved to stand. She threw her hands out to keep her balance then tested her weight on her rolled ankle. A hiss escaped from between her teeth at the shot of agony through her foot. “Damn it.”
She couldn’t put any weight on it. Not without causing further damage.
She cut her attention to the nearest tree and hopped—one footed—to the trunk for support.
Bark scraped and caught in the bandages wrapped around her palms. She wouldn’t get far in this condition, but every step forward was a step away from failure.
And she’d seen too much of that. In the relationship with her parents, in her relationship with Rome.
Failure to escape one. Failure to hold on to the other.
Her career had been there to fall back on when she’d needed it the most, but where had it left her?
Alone in the middle of a national park with no one but a bear who’d barely managed not to eat her as company.
Where she truly believed she’d wanted to be.
Except… Her career wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good in the middle of these woods.
Her research and data analysis wasn’t coming to save her. And it wasn’t going to love her back.
No matter how many times she’d convinced herself she’d been fulfilled—that the divorce was a good thing and would help her focus on what was important—that hollowness in her chest only grew.
The lonely nights, the days where she didn’t talk to a single person, the inability to find a hobby she could stick with or even enjoy, the urge to turn to laugh with a companion at a funny scene from whatever comedy she was watching only to find the space next to her empty.
Without even realizing it, those moments had overtaken her life.
Sucked all meaning and left her as nothing more than a husk, but she didn’t have to accept it.
She wouldn’t. She needed more. She needed to be happy more than she needed another paper published under her name or another research grant application submitted.
When was the last time she’d been happy?
The answer had surfaced over the past two days. Right along with the frustrating, impossible, caring man who’d broken her heart. And, right now, he needed her to move. To get to her supplies.
Lettie used the tree at her back to push herself west. Back toward the trail she and Rome had stepped off of. Where she’d stashed her supplies.
“I know you’re here, Arlette.” He hadn’t made a sound during his approach, a true hunter she had little chance of escaping. “I can smell your body wash. Vanilla and amber. Mmm.”
She froze. Her fight-or-flight response paralyzed her from the crown of her head to her toes.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as movement shifted off to her left.
One wrong move and he’d spot her, but staying in the same place guaranteed to end this hunt early.
What would he do with her? Drag her back to that tree?
Kill her first? Make her watch as he tore Rome apart?
Her stomach twisted tighter with every scenario playing through her head.
“I smelled it that first time I saw you. Smelled it every day since, too.” His voice spread through the trees, playing with her mind.
The sun hadn’t set fully, but she swore he’d suddenly shifted position without her seeing.
Closer than before. “I couldn’t help myself.
Getting close to you all those months ago.
You didn’t even notice I’d taken the bottle from your van a few days later. ”
She remembered that. Thinking the bottle must’ve fallen from its perch on the shower shelf and slid beneath the bed after a sharp turn.
It’d happened before with other products and belongings.
She just hadn’t gotten around to go searching for it.
But now… He’d been in her van. His hints had said as much, but confirmation slicked some kind of dirty sensation through her veins.
Lettie didn’t dare respond as her body finally answered her brain’s command to put as much distance between them as possible.
One step.
A twig snapped beneath her boot.
Announcing her position.
Every nerve caught fire as an outline solidified in her peripheral vision. “Hello, there.”
She ran.
Pain lightninged through her ankle and up her leg with every dragging step, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let it get the best of her. Heavy footsteps crunched behind her. Growing louder. Closing in.
Don’t look back. She couldn’t look back.
Couldn’t give him the upper hand. She swallowed back her terror, focusing on the layout of the landscape.
Tree after tree seemed to lean into her path as she barreled through the woods.
Rocks shot up from the ground, threatening to bring her down all over again.
The pain in her foot intensified, her skin on fire.
All of it combined to trip her up. He was close.
She could hear him breathing, practically feel the killer reaching out for her.
She couldn’t outrun him. Not even without a swollen ankle.
She didn’t know these woods as well as she should have.
Didn’t know how to survive out here alone.
There was no escaping this cat and mouse game he’d started.
She had to change the rules. Lettie leaned into her swollen ankle. She took a sharp right.
His fingers brushed across her shoulders but didn’t latch on. A growl sounded from behind.
She looked back. Only once to see where he’d gone.
Just as the ground dropped out from underneath her.
Gravity suctioned her back to the earth. Harder than her previous fall. Stars exploded behind her eyes as her temple connected with something immovable, but her momentum kept her spinning. Falling. Pain lanced across her exposed skin, nothing more than whimpers escaping up her throat.
Then cold.
It closed in around her. Shocked her nerve endings.
Suffocated her. Gentle pressure shoved at one side of her body and propelled her down, down, down.
Water shoved up her nose and pressurized the oxygen in her chest. Darkness intensified around her as she clawed upward, but she couldn’t get her feet underneath her. Didn’t know which way was up.
Her jacket tightened around her middle as it caught on something unseen in the river’s depths. Kept her from reaching the surface. Lettie tried reaching behind her, tried to pry herself from what felt like a stripped tree branch stuck in the river’s silt. But it was no use. She couldn’t reach.
Her head pounded. The small amount of air in her lungs burned. This was it. This was how she paid for her failure after years of letting the important things in her life slip through her fingers. Kicking with everything she had, she refused to give into the black edging her vision.
Until she couldn’t fight it anymore.