Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
HUDSON
I t’s been a long time since I’ve felt this kind of ache in my muscles, and I don’t hate it. Hart, Kennedy, and I have hit the ground running, and with nothing else to do around here, our only focus has been work.
Because if I’m focused on work, I can’t be focused on the random shit going on. Like how my keys got from where I left them on the kitchen counter to the table when Kennedy and Hart swear they didn’t touch them.
Though it would be just like Hartwell to mess with me.
Thankfully, he has his uses too.
He’s drawn up plans for extending the houses, and hopefully, today is the day he gets the plans back from his engineer friend.
Of the three of us, he’s always been the smartest, and while I wanted him to stay at college and get his architecture degree, he’d scoffed at the idea and told me to fuck off.
Mom and Dad gave up on us all forever ago, so I’d had no one in my corner to help convince him .
I walk along the street, hoping today will be the day I get used to the place. It’s still creepy, but with each day that passes, the early fog and thick trees in every direction don’t play with my mind as much.
Kennedy is loudly bashing away at something inside, the constant thunk echoing through the deep silence.
As someone who’s always surrounded by people, this complete isolation is new.
The cell service is spotty at best, which is something we’ll need to fix, and I keep bouncing between being completely at ease in what could be a hidden paradise and close to panic over us doing something so fucking stupid.
I stoop down to pick up a rock and send it sailing down the street. It bounces off the road with a chink … chink before hitting dirt, and when I pull my eyes up from where it’s landed?—
Holy fuck .
My heart jumps out of my fucking chest as I throw myself against the nearest house. My pulse is racing like I’ve launched myself off a goddamn cliff, and it takes me a second to process what the hell just happened.
A man.
I think I saw a man.
I lean forward, easing off the wall to look back up into the trees. I’m not confident on exactly where I saw him, and with each passing second, I’m wondering if it happened at all. My brain is swimming in what the fuck as I try to get myself to calm down.
“Hudson?” I jump at my name before I recognize Kennedy’s voice. He’s paused on the stairs from the house we’re working on, rolled-up carpet slung over his broad shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“I dunno, fucking turtles? I’m panicking, what does it look like I’m doing?” I start toward him, not able to stop from flicking looks back toward the trees. Was it a ghost? An axe murderer? My imagination well and truly losing it? “I think … I saw someone.”
His eyebrows hit his hairline. “What? Where?”
I’m still not confident on exactly where, but I point in the general direction. “Up there. It was a guy. I think he was watching me.”
Kennedy tilts his head, but the trees rising above us on that side stay empty. With a hmm , he heaves the carpet over the short metal railing and into the junk pile we’ve started on the street. “Someone hiking past?”
I turn the suggestion over as he joins me, admitting that probably makes sense. There’s a main-ish road further up the hill, so the guy probably parked there and took a walk down.
My heart rate calms into something normal. “Probably.” I crack a smile. “Freaked me the fuck out.”
“I bet. We’ve been here … almost a week? Haven’t seen anyone. I probably would have pissed my pants.”
“Yeah, but you did wet the bed until you were ten, so …”
He gives me a friendly shove. “It was seven, you dick, and that’s a totally average age.”
“Is it though?”
Kennedy brushes off his gloves. “Should we go for a walk and check it out? Make sure the guy isn’t lost?”
Lost? That hadn’t even occurred to me, which only goes to show that my brother is a million times better than I am. I’d seen the guy and thought serial killer. Which means I’m not at all interested in going searching for him, but Kennedy has already headed that way.
“You sure about this?” I check, falling into step with him. “What if he’s waiting to skin us alive?”
“Well, there’re two of us and one of him, so I think he’s shit out of luck. Come on, getting an answer will make you less dramatic.”
“There you go, underestimating me.”
I’d leave a note behind for Hart to save himself, but knowing my brother, possible death will be an incentive for him to follow us.
My hands burrow into my pockets and I follow a step behind Kennedy. I never claimed to be the brave one. “So what’s your plan?”
“Head in that direction and see what we find? We’ve been talking about exploring anyway.”
“Yeah, toward the river. There’s nothing else to explore.”
“Where’s your adventurous spirit?” he asks.
“Hiding behind my self-preservation.”
“I’m telling you, this will be fine.”
I don’t bother to point out that’s what everyone tells themselves before they end up in a situation that’s very much not fine. “If I am right and you’re wrong, can you at least promise me you’ll die first so I have a chance to get away?”
“Deal.” The fact that he can agree so confidently helps settle that off feeling. “Anything else?”
I think for a second and come up empty. “I’m doing this under duress.”
“Noted.”
We leave the small town behind. There’s plenty of room to walk between the trees, and it’s easy to keep track of which way we’re going.
This close to the town, the forest looks more complicated than it is, and even though I have a rough direction for us, we don’t find anyone.
I keep my ears strained as we search, but it’s only trees and more trees, even the birds that were calling earlier have disappeared.
“Weird,” Kennedy mutters on our way back .
“What is?”
He stares at the wide path we’re walking along. “Those sort of look like tire tracks.”
I follow his gaze to the leaf-covered ground, trying to see what he sees. The way the dirt and grass have been compacted could be tires for sure.
“Someone was out here.”
Kennedy doesn’t answer. Which is probably a good thing because a tire means a car, and a car means a person, and if they didn’t drive through town … where the hell did they come from?
“Right,” Kennedy says suddenly. “Well, at least we know to listen out. If someone is driving around, we’ll hear them first.”
I don’t point out that we didn’t hear them this time, but I’m still not sure this time even happened. These tracks could be from a while ago.
We leave the forest behind, and it’s a relief to be back on familiar ground, even if my back won’t stop prickling with awareness.
Nothing we can do about it now.
Except maybe send Hart out to buy some hunting guns tomorrow.
Hart’s only reaction was a disinterested “cool” when we told him what I saw, but as the days pass with nothing else weird, I have to grudgingly accept that Hart has the right idea.
With no available electricity, we have to rely on the small generator we brought with us, so we make dinner on a gas hot plate outside most nights. Which would be fun. If I could shake the feeling of someone watching me .
Instead of creeping me out further, it’s only making me more pissed off.
I want to shake the paranoia and enjoy this time with my brothers, but my senses won’t quit thrumming.
I don’t believe in ghost stories, but Wilde’s End almost makes me think that I do.
Between that man and my keys, I can’t shake the feeling something is up.
The town itself is a yawning bridge between the past and now, and that kind of history isn’t easy to ignore.
For me.
The twins seem to have no issue with it.
“I’d sort of like to keep one for myself,” Kennedy says from his camping chair.
Hart wrinkles his nose. “Why? What will you do with it?”
“Live in it? What else do you do with a house?”
There’s a beat while Hart processes that. “Wait. You’d move here? Like, permanently?”
“I think so. It’s peaceful.”
“It’s dirty. And smells. And there’s some guy out there who wants to murder Hudson.”
I slump. “Well, now I won’t have any issues sleeping tonight.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, doing up houses that no one will ever buy, digging ourselves into a financial grave, and acting like this isn’t all because Hudson thought he had something to prove.”
“Don’t drag me into this because you’re worried you’ll lose Kennedy.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Hart says, forcing that bored drag back into his words. “I give it a month before we move back home. Tops.”
Hartwell should know better than to taunt me.
He says I’ll give up after a month? That only makes me more determined.
We’ve made great progress with the demolition, but unfortunately, that’s usually the easy part.
Getting supplies up here, services hooked up, tradespeople we need for work is going to be the part that fucks up our plans.
We have some good contacts, but convincing them to drive the four hours here is going to cost us, and we need a place for them to stay once they’re here.
Not everyone is interested in slumming it like we are.
My head already aches over the logistics, and I shake it off as I push to my feet. “I’m going to bed. I’m going to need cell service tomorrow, so I’ll take the car out early.”
“Sweet dreams,” Kennedy says, stretching his arms back.
Hart flicks me a disinterested wave as I pass, and as I’m walking back to the house, my gaze immediately seeks the same spot it has over the last few days. It’s always empty.
Until now.
I stagger to a halt, squinting into the dark that the moonlight isn’t strong enough to shift. The forest is patchy blacks and grays right now, but I could have sworn I saw something. Something that looked like the shadowy figure of a man.
“You okay?” Kennedy calls out, snapping my attention back to him. The figure is gone, and from this angle, it could have easily been a tree.
Is my brain messing with me?
I suck down a breath and keep walking. “Yep,” I call back, bounding up the front steps. “Just a trick of the light.”
I’m not so sure I believe that. I grab the flashlight resting by the front door and make my way into the only ground-floor bedroom.
We’re leaving this house until last so we have somewhere to sleep, and with my clothes hung in the closet and my inflatable mattress set up on the floor, it’s almost cozy.
But I ignore those things and cross to the window, flicking the flashlight on and pointing it back toward the forest. The circle of light bounces dimly from one tree to the next, and I hold my breath, convinced it’s about to glint off a pair of eyes .
It takes a few minutes of searching before I’m satisfied.
I am seeing things.
I click off the flashlight and turn to sink down against the wall. This town is getting to me.