Chapter 19
The crash was a flash of metal and noise, a scream of rubber against wet pavement.
Mark had taken the corner too fast in his beautiful black truck, eyes fixed on the mirror instead of the road.
His truck spun out, tires catching mud, gravel spraying like shrapnel.
Now the sweet truck had bullet holes in it from that FBI agent shooting back at him.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap. Steel met oak with a violence that shuddered through his bones, snapping his head forward hard enough to split his lip against the steering wheel. His chest hit the seat belt, the force like a sledgehammer to his ribs.
Then silence.
He woke with blood in his mouth and a thunderstorm pounding inside his skull. The airbag had deployed but deflated to a useless heap of nylon and powder. The windshield was a kaleidoscope of cracks, a dark vein of blood smeared across it from his forehead.
He’d gotten away, but they had to be coming for him. Tying up loose ends. He had to run. Now.
The taste of iron thickened on his tongue. Blood dripped from his nose, slow and steady, painting his upper lip with a warmth that shouldn’t have been comforting. His hands shook as he fumbled for the seat belt release, fingers slipping off the latch twice before it finally clicked free.
He shoved the door open with his shoulder. It gave with a groan of metal, and a fresh lance of pain stabbed through his ribs. He stumbled out, his boots sinking into mud. The night was thick with rain, the air a cold bite that clung to his skin.
Something in his ankle twisted wrong as he moved, a sharp, splintering pain that nearly sent him to his knees. But he didn’t fall. Couldn’t.
He had to keep moving. Before they caught up to him.
His brain hurt like fingernails scraped across the delicate tissues. Like something alive had dug into his skull and was making room for itself.
Pain. Agony. Life.
He wiped the blood from his nose, but the streaks only smeared across his skin. His vision tilted, edges blurring in and out, but he forced his legs to move. Tripping over roots, he scraped his palms against bark slick with rain.
No sounds echoed from behind him. No engines. No voices. But they’d been there. He’d seen the headlights—too close, too deliberate. Or had he? Was he imagining things again?
The trees closed in, branches clawing at his face, leaves slapping against his shoulders. The world around him pulsed in shades of black and gray, shadows deepening with each uneven step.
And then, through the rain, a shape.
He stumbled to a halt, chest heaving, the air a knife scraping against his throat.
The figure was there, between two pines. Cloaked in darkness, its head tilted as if studying him. For a moment, it had shape, lines, and angles that should’ve made sense. But the longer he stared, the less real it became.
He blinked, and it was gone.
Just rain and shadows and the whisper of the wind remained.
His hands trembled. His mind spun excuses, some of them almost convincing. Blood loss. Exhaustion. A trick of the dark.
He’d done worse than hallucinate before. He’d drowned himself in whiskey until the world blurred around him, broken the wrong man’s bones just to prove he could. Lived too long thinking rage was the same as strength.
He pressed forward, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs. The pain was a constant throb now, swelling through his skull until his teeth ached.
The ground sloped downward, slick with mud. He slid more than walked, his body twisting to catch his balance. Every jolt shot fresh agony through his ankle.
And still, the thought of stopping terrified him more than the pain.
Regret pooled beneath his thoughts, a dark, creeping thing he’d buried too deep for too long. No one would mourn him if he didn’t make it out of these woods. That was the truth. Not his fault, not really. Just the way he’d built his life. He’d burned every bridge until the smoke blackened the sky.
But there was something worse than dying alone. Something worse than dying in this godforsaken stretch of trees with his own blood soaking into the dirt.
His brain felt too big for his skull, swelling until the pressure forced more blood from his nose.
It dripped down his chin, hot against the chill in the air.
He tripped into a clearing, his knees buckling as he collapsed to the ground.
The cold seeped through his shirt, his chest heaving with every shallow breath.
That’s when he saw it again.
Not twenty feet away, between the twisted trunks of the pines.
The Reaper. Just a suggestion of a figure, its outline shimmering with the kind of darkness that had weight. Solid enough to be real, but wrong in the way it moved. The way it waited.
He blinked, and it was gone.
His hands fisted in the mud, fingers clenching tight enough to make his knuckles ache. Another hallucination. Had to be. Maybe the crash had cracked something in his head. Maybe the blood dripping from his nose wasn’t the worst of it.
But that didn’t explain the certainty crawling along his skin, raising the hair on the back of his neck. He’d lived a bad life. Made decisions with the kind of casual cruelty that had come so easy, back when strength meant something different.
No apologies. No atonement. Just violence and vengeance.
And now, this.
He forced himself upright, his legs threatening to buckle. The pain was relentless, his vision a blur of shapes and shadows. But he kept moving. Because if he stopped, whatever lurked between the trees would catch him.
He was sure of that, even if he couldn’t explain why.
Another step. Then another. The ache in his chest sharpened with every breath.
The ground dipped, slick earth stealing his balance. He slid down a short slope, his shoulder smashing against something solid. Bark tore at his skin, and his fresh blood mingled with the rain.
The Reaper waited at the bottom of the hill. Watching.
Mark let out a shuddering breath, the sound raw and broken. “Get the hell away from me.” His voice was shredded, rasping through the rain. The apparition didn’t answer and just stood there, a shadow with eyes he couldn’t quite see.
He blinked again. Gone.
His head swam, pain twisting through his skull like hot wire. His body felt too heavy, his limbs leaden and cold.
But he kept moving. Because something was out there, stalking him with the kind of patience that suggested it had been waiting for a long, long time.
Regret boiled up again, bitter and sharp. Maybe it wasn’t just the Reaper. Maybe it was every damn thing he’d left undone, every grudge and grift he’d run from. Maybe he’d spent so long escaping that he’d finally run himself down.
He wiped blood from his face, his fingers trembling. The darkness thickened, swallowing the world until nothing was left but pain and rain and the certainty that something was closing in.
He took another step.
And then another.
Because death wasn’t going to take him without a fight. Yet as he fell between a couple of thick trees, unable to move, a hysterical humor took him. It wasn’t the first fight he’d lost . . . but apparently it would be the last.
In her conference room, Laurel finished straightening the pictures and connected lines on the case board.
So far, she had Dr. Miriam Liu, Larry Scott, and Melissa Palmtree from Oakridge Solutions on one board with Dr. Liu connected to Tyler Griggs because of the lesions on their brains.
Off to the side, she taped a picture of Dr. Sandoval, even though he’d been killed by the sniper.
She’d obtained a picture of Dr. Bertra Yannish from social media and taped her picture up as well.
Perhaps she’d earned a promotion from the death of Dr. Liu.
The next board showed Laurel’s face with sniper eyelines, a description of the truck, and a list of former cases she needed to examine closer.
The final board had Abigail’s case on it, usually flipped over so Norrs couldn’t see it.
Laurel sat on the Formica table and stared at the Oakridge Solutions board. “Nester? Have you found out anything about Melissa Palmtree?” Hopefully she hadn’t been cremated like Larry Scott had. Not that Laurel had any proof their deaths were related to Dr. Liu’s.
“Yeah. She was buried outside of Bellevue.” Nester crossed into view, leaning against the doorjamb. Today he wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, revealing dark and muscled forearms.
Laurel blew out air. “Start an application to have her body exhumed, would you? It’s a long shot, I know. I’ll create my own affidavit, but we’ll need one from Dr. Ortega as well. Thanks.”
“Sure.” Nester turned and headed back to his computer room.
Kate called down the hallway. “Sandra Plankton is here to see you.” She led the way down the hallway and gestured the young woman into the conference room.
“Thanks, Kate.” Laurel hopped off the table, flipped the boards over to reveal the clear sides, and gestured for Sandra to sit.
Sandra dropped into the chair across from Laurel, her posture more defiant than polite.
She couldn’t have been more than twenty, her hair wild and tangled around her shoulders.
There was a washed-out T-shirt stretched over her slight frame, the graphic faded but still readable: STOP KILLING THE PLANET!
The lettering was half-obscured by her threadbare flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up unevenly. “Nice table.”
“Thanks. It’s temporary.” Laurel pulled out a chair and sat.
Ripped jeans and scuffed hiking boots completed Sandra’s look. Her skin was pale, her eyes rimmed red, like sleep hadn’t found her in days. She didn’t wear any makeup, but her expression appeared fierce.
Walter stepped into the conference room and tugged a chair his way to sit.
“Ms. Plankton,” Laurel said. “Thank you for coming in.”