'It's too late! Oh my God, he's here!'
Kasey's head snapped up. Her hand flicked to the headlights, and when the two beams split the night, she saw the black outline of a man ten feet in front of the car. He had no face, like a headless monster, and Kasey realized he wore a ski mask pulled down over his skull.
'Kill him!'
Kasey lifted the gun, but the man outside the car ducked to his knees and rolled away. She snatched up her keys and fired the engine, and the Cutlass motor roared to life. She shoved the gear into reverse and pressed the accelerator to the floor, and the car shot backward, swerving. Before Kasey could control it, the Cutlass veered into the long grass and collided with the trunk of one of the trees bordering the driveway. Pine needles and branches sprinkled over the windows. The impact knocked her gun out of her hand, and it disappeared between the seat cushion and the right-side door.
'Shit, I dropped the gun.'
'Oh, my God!' the woman screamed.
Kasey jumped across the seat for the gun, but she wasn't fast enough. When she looked up, he was outside the car window. The man's black ryes gleamed at her, and for a split second the two of them stared at each other through the glass. She thought he was smiling. He reached tor the door handle.
Behind her, the woman dissolved into panic. Her cry was like an animal's howl, and she reacted the way an animal would, by trying to flee. The woman flung open the rear door and bolted into the night, running in bare feet toward the deeper woods beyond the farm, swallowed up by the fog. The man outside the window abandoned the car and followed her. In an instant, he was invisible too. Kasey was alone.
She wanted nothing more than to drive away. Escape to safety. Pretend that nothing had happened here. She wanted to return to the highway and block out the last five minutes from her brain and criss-cross the empty roads until she found her way home. But she couldn't let this woman and her pursuer run off into the woods. She had to go after them.
Kasey located her gun wedged inside the door frame and locked both doors behind her as she scrambled out of the Cutlass. Outside the car, she froze with indecision. She squeezed her right hand against her forehead and took several loud, open-mouthed breaths to hold hack her terror. Her body was soaked with sweat. She listened and heard a scream not far away and tried to pinpoint the direction of the voice.
Her mind said again: Escape. Run.
Kasey had no choice but to ignore what her instincts told her. She ran from the car, her heart in her mouth, her stomach churning with acid and fear. On both sides, the pines loomed like fat soldiers. She slashed through the branches, trying to see what was ahead of her, but the fog left her sightless. She found herself in an open patch of wet grass and ran faster, and then the grass ended in a thick stand of paper birches. She stopped and listened again, trying to hear sounds above her own breathing. Somewhere ahead she heard the noise of branches cracking and heavy footfalls in the woods. Kasey followed.
She pushed through sharp brambles that ripped at her sleeves. The trees were matted and close together here, like passengers at a crowded train station. She held her gun high, pointed at the sky. Her feet tripped her up as she fought her way forward, stumbling on bulging tree roots and indentations in the soil. Her wet red hair sagged over her eyes. In some part of her soul, she realized she was crying, but she shoved aside her emotions. She hadn't come this far for nothing. Her heart hardened, becoming cold and furious.
As she ran, she heard a wet, roaring noise far below her. She realized what it was, but not before the ground beneath her became air. Her momentum carried her off the edge of a steep slope, where she tumbled shoulder over shoulder through mud and trees. The contents of her pockets spilled across the slope; her badge was ripped from her shirt; one boot fell away and left her right foot bare. She fell twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet, and finally landed heavily on the soggy earth at the bottom of the hill. She tried to clear her head. Nothing felt broken. She got up slowly and realized with relief that she still had her gun clutched in her hand.
Water cascaded through the narrows. She recognized where she was now, at the edge of the Lester River where it ran southward toward Lake Superior. She knew this area from her beat, knew that a highway bridge crossed the river barely fifty yards away, knew that a single turn of the wheel would lead her back to Highway 43. Of all the horrors of this night, she had gotten lost only ten minutes from her home.
Another scream rose above the noise of the river from the opposite shore. Kasey stumbled on to the marshy rye grass at the bank, and the water flooded to her ankles. She could make out the black water; the fog was thinning. The river was barely twenty feet from shore to shore, but she forgot that the narrows also meant the water here was stronger and faster. She waded in with a shudder, and the impact slammed her body and knocked her off her feet. The hurtling current whipped her downstream before her feet clawed for purchase on the slippery rocks of the river bed. She fought to the opposite bank and dug her fingers into the eroded clay soil above her. With a silent groan, she pulled herself out of the river and on to the soft grass.
She still hung on to her gun. She was drenched and freezing. Shivers wracked her body.
She ducked under the arms of a huge spruce and crept through fallen branches that snapped under her feet. Just ahead of her was a low, square building of white cinder block, an abandoned dairy she passed on her beat every week. From the other side of the stone building she heard a strangled cry. With both hands, Kasey pointed the way with her gun and followed their trail behind the rear wall of the dairy. The stonework was cracked, the white paint peeling. The windows were shattered and covered over with chicken wire. She passed a rusting propane tank.
Carefully, she eased around the corner to the open field of grass behind the building.
They were there. Both of them. Wet to the bone. The man tightened a metal wire around the woman's neck, biting into the bloody line he had made there earlier. She struggled, but faintly, her limbs twitching. When the man saw Kasey, he jerked the woman's body in front of him as a shield. All that was visible was one of his dark eyes, shining brightly.
Kasey extended her gun. Her cold, tired arms trembled. 'Let her go.'
They faced each other across twenty feet of mist and darkness. Kasey knew she barely had a shot. She focused on what she could see of his body. Half of his head. The meat of his shoulder. His right leg. He was taller than the woman in his grasp, but his knees were bent as he crouched behind her.
'Let her go now,' Kasey repeated. 'Run if you want.'
'Drop the gun, and I'll let her go.'
'I'm going to take the shot.'
'And risk killing her? Not a chance.'
Kasey took a step closer. The man backed up, dragging the woman with him, her feet scraping the ground. 'I already told you. Run.'
The noose strangled the woman, choking off her air. Her near-dead eyes bulged.
Kasey sighted down the barrel of her gun. She planted her feet in the sodden soil. She exhaled slowly and felt a serene calm wash over her freezing skin. Her finger eased on to the trigger.
Behind the mask, the man taunted her. 'You won't do it,' he said.
Kasey took the shot.
PART ONE
PANIC ATTACK
Chapter One
Jonathan Stride watched the knife fall to the floor.