CHAPTER THIRTEEN
T
he phone slipped from my grip, and since the only place to get service was hanging halfway out the window, it dropped fifteen feet before the ground swallowed it up.
The guys’ voices as they shouted my name through the speaker carried the distance, so the leaves must have cushioned its fall.
My mind slipped then scrambled with a dozen different scenarios. Was the mayor—God, it sounded so ridiculous, even inside my head—lurking down below, waiting for me to emerge? Was he even closer? Had he climbed the planks, literally right under my feet?
I sought to steel myself, searching for an iota of calm amid a turbulent morass of negative energy. Panic only killed girls trapped in horror movies, which was what my life felt like at the moment.
Calm down. You’re okay, Ben’s voice murmured, a flash of warmth that dissipated as quickly as it’d arrived. It helped though. I used that reassurance. Contrived or not, the emotions that followed were real.
My head cleared.
It was autumn.
I would have heard a person approaching. With all the dried, crunchy leaves everywhere, even squirrels sounded like Sasquatch tromping through the brush. Besides, I’d driven the four-wheeler out here most of the way. How would he have been able to keep pace on foot?
One more deep breath cleared the lingering paralysis.
“Go. Go.” By the third repetition, I made myself move. Pulling up the trapdoor, I realized how dark it’d grown. Sunset took about fifteen minutes. It’d come and gone during our call.
“Willa? Willa!”
A chorus of sounds, growing increasingly agitated and panicked, flooded the area, so loud that it felt as if they were right here in the woods alongside me.
“I’m okay,” I called, hoping they’d hear me. Hunter sounded about two seconds away from calling in the cavalry.
The planks we’d hammered into the trees for a ladder had seen better days.
A sharp, splintering crack sounded a warning before I lost my footing and free fell.
I gasped. It was disconcerting in the dark.
I had no visual to get my bearings. The impact with the ground jarred straight through my bones and rattled my heart inside its chest cavity, and it felt as if my ribs had collapsed.
Breathe, in and out.
The suffocating feeling terrified me. Had I broken something irreparable? Would I die out here?
In a sudden rush, my airways reopened, allowing a flood of air to cool the burning pain.
The relief that followed soothed my terror.
I’d just had the wind knocked out of me.
Thank goodness. Hunter would have never let me live it down if I’d died out here from something so benign after surviving everything else.
His “I told you so” would have transcended the living and dead barrier loud and clear.
When my body recovered, a long, drawn-out groan edged free. “Ow.”
“What happened? Willa? Fuck, what are we going to do? We have to call the police—”
“No!” I blurted, receiving a burst of energy from adrenaline fueled panic.
If I never saw a police officer again, it would be too soon.
“It’s okay.” Prematurely speaking sent me into a coughing fit, but I powered through, crawling on hands and knees through the dry leaves and doing my best to ignore the amount of creepy-crawlies I had to be brushing elbows with during my blind fumble.
My lungs settled.
“I’m here. Kolton?” They’d fallen silent in an attempt to listen for any details, but I didn’t need their silence. “Please, talk to me. I can’t find my phone. It must have landed face down. Hello?”
“Fucking fuck, are you okay, Wordsmith?”
I spun, homing in on the sound. A faint glow trickled out through the leaves.
“There you are,” I crowed below my breath, diving for the target. Hard, inorganic lines met my touch, and I scooped it up. “Hi, hello, I’m—I’m here.”
“Thank God,” Ralph murmured. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine—”
“What was that loud thump? Is someone there with you?”
“No, I dropped the phone.” More sheepishly, I mumbled, “And then myself.”
Kolton wore a hoodie now, and his bedroom filled the frame. He hunched over, tying one shoe at a time. “You fell from the tree house?”
I brushed some leaves from my hair. “Not all the way. A rung gave out. Hunter, are you driving?” The soft illumination from a dashboard compared to the starkly lit auto shop interior could mean nothing else.
“Yes,” he grunted.
“You’re off work?”
“I am now.” His phone rested in some holder affixed to the dash of his Jeep, showing the interior of his vehicle as oncoming lights flashed across him. “Coming to drag your ass out of the woods.”
“What? Why?”
“No, he has the right idea,” Ralph joined in. His video feed bounced violently, as if he were booking it over rough terrain, maxing the capabilities of the seat’s air ride suspension in whatever farm equipment he’d been using. “I’ll help.”
“Fuck, I need a car,” Kolton complained, throwing on a football hoodie with the West Winsor wolverine on it. “One of you stop and pick me up.”
My cheeks burned. “Guys, seriously. You’re overreacting.
” I angled my camera down at the forest floor, making a point to kick through the leaves and cause as much noise as possible.
“See? If anyone followed me out here, I would have—” I’d turned the phone back around, only to notice a tall, dark silhouette standing behind me.
My breath caught as I instinctively whirled around.
No one was there.
I put my hand on my chest, as if to slow my heartbeat from pure will alone. To be safe, I double-checked the immediate area. The largest tree here was the oak that housed the tree house, and it stood a good ten feet away.
Remember your own argument, Willa.
Had someone been lurking behind me, they’d have made all sorts of racket double-timing it to conceal themselves in the split second it took me to whirl around. They’d have to be moving inhumanly fast, and it’d been a human-shaped figure I’d seen beyond my shoulder.
With a healthy dose of caution and an even bigger serving of trepidation, I forced myself to check my screen.
Nothing. Just the darkness of the woods and whatever the brightness of my screen lit. My shoulders dropped with an exhale.
“Oh my god! Fuck! What?” Kolton demanded. “You’re going to give me a fucking heart attack. What did you see, Wordsmith?”
“It… ah, it’s hard to explain. Maybe nothing.”
“Maybe nothing? Hard to explain? Fuck! Of all the times you can’t think of words… Hunter, how close are you?”
Hunter flipped a turn signal, leaning into the move. “To her house? Ten minutes.”
“From work?” I blinked. That was fast. “You have to be going at least twenty over the speed limit.”
“Hmm.”
What an unapologetically ambiguous sound.
I began walking because, although I didn’t think there was anyone here, the calm, solitary atmosphere had shattered.
Now, visions of being tracked and killed, having one of my episodes out in the middle of nowhere, or just dumbly tripping and falling in the dark with no help in sight, left an itch on the back of my neck that had me looking over my shoulder every fifth step or so.
“Seriously, Hunter. Look—er, don’t look, because you’re driving, but Kolton can tell you.
I’m walking as we speak. In five minutes, I’ll be at the four-wheeler, and then in another five minutes, I’ll drive the rest of the way through the woods.
I’ll be home before you even get here, so what’s the point? Just go back to work, please.”
“I don’t think you’d understand the point if it smacked you in the forehead,” Hunter grumbled.
“What are you going to tell my parents for dropping by and meeting me out here? That you’re worried a madman will hunt me down and unalive me? My mom already wants me to get therapy. If she thinks I’m in danger, she might start looking into bodyguards.”
“Funny,” Hunter deadpanned. “Just get back to your house. We’ll meet you there.”
“This is ridiculous. If anyone was here, they would have jumped me by now.”
“You’re an expert in psychos now?” Hunter tilted his head. “Unless you know who he is and genuinely suspect he wouldn’t come find you out there…”
“Angle the camera a little,” Kolton ordered.
“What? Why?” the three of us said in tandem. Hunter and Ralph peered at their phones, driving be damned, while I whirled around to check behind me, my heart in my throat.
“Shit, fuck, sorry, Willa,” Kolton apologized, sounding sincere. “I just feel so fucking useless here, stuck while you’re out there in the fucking woods. There’s nothing I can do until Ralph shows up.”
Hunter swore, shaking his head, as he returned his full focus to the road.
“Sorry,” Kolton repeated, giving a slight laugh.
“Fuck, we’re all so keyed up. Get your ass back to your house, Willa.
We won’t survive any more jump scares. Still, though, I want to watch your six for any fuck faces trying to sneak up on you, so be a sweetheart and angle that screen a little for me, okay? ”
I obliged, feeling better despite myself, knowing he was.
The four-wheeler came into view, a bright ghostly white against the coffee brown backdrop of the fall forest, resting just to the side of the trail.
The engine still ticked as it cooled right where I’d parked it.
The guys seemed somewhat mollified when I showed them, the tension ebbing from their movements.
It didn’t stop their planning though.
In his frame, Ralph made a sharp turn, spinning the wheel like a pirate at the helm of his ship. The sun and shadows shifted across his face. “I’m almost at the house. Just need to lock up the combine in the pole barn. Dinner at Willa’s? Will your dad have enough food to feed all of us?”
“He, well… I mean, he does most of the time. You—”
“I’ll call him,” Hunter cut in. “He won’t say no. Rob’s cool.”
He was on a first-name basis with my dad? And when did Hunter get his number?
The entire conversation felt like whiplash, or like I’d endured another eight-foot drop to the ground and couldn’t catch my breath.