Chapter 31
Liz was peering into the depths of the forest. “Maggie! Maggie!”
For the first hour they’d retraced their footsteps along the trail. They’d since turned around and cut through the woods in case Maggie had overshot the path and come out further up. But there was still no sign of her—and Liz was aware that the sun was beginning to lower.
Liz lifted the map around her neck. Her brow wrinkled as she studied the deep spread of green on either side of their trail, which stretched for tens of kilometers in all directions. If Maggie had strayed from the path, she could be anywhere.
“Check your phones,” she instructed, taking out her own. She eyed the empty space where the bars of reception should have been.
“Still nothing,” Helena said.
“Me neither.” Joni rubbed the side of her face. “What do we do?”
“Go back to the lodge, raise the alarm?” Liz suggested.
“It’s a day and a half’s walk. Maggie can’t spend the night out here—she hasn’t even got a tent,” Helena said.
Liz balked. “What?”
“We split it. Maggie took the pegs and poles. I’ve got the material.”
Liz knew exposure was the biggest killer among lost hikers. It got cold overnight out here. Last night the temperature must have fallen as low as five or six degrees Celsius.
“We’ll find her,” Liz said, but the promise sounded flat, even to her ears.
Without communicating it, they all picked up their pace, gazes swinging to the spaces between the trees.
Suddenly, Liz froze, holding out a hand to signal for the others to stop.
She could hear her pulse in her ears as she waited, alert.
The forest hummed with the stirring of leaves and unseen insects.
She could pick it up more clearly now—the low sound of movement, the hurried pad of feet against earth.
No one spoke, waiting.
Ahead, the bushes parted, a dark shape traveling toward them, fast. The shape, the speed, sent a spike of dread through her middle.
Behind her, Joni gasped.
A dark, wirehaired dog, ears flattened to its head, came galloping from the forest. Its mouth hung open, tongue lolling. A frill of blood dripped from the long hairs of its muzzle as it came at them.
The dog bolted past on the narrow trail. Liz felt the brush of its fur against her legs, its warm, animal smell, muddied with the scent of blood.
“Is that Vilhelm’s—” Helena began to ask.
From deep in the woods, they heard a scream.