Chapter 1: Chapter 1
He flipped his own lights off completely, shoved the truck into gear, and turned onto the dark, rough track after them.
The world collapsed into shadows and violent motion. His truck lurched and bucked over the deep ruts, the steering wheel jerking in his hands. Branches, invisible until the last second, scraped like claws along the passenger side with a sound that set his teeth on edge. He could barely see the twin red taillights of the SUV ahead, bobbing like malevolent fireflies through the thick timber. He focused on them, his foot feathering the gas, trying to close the distance without slamming into a pine or burying his front end in a washout.
Ahead, the SUV’s lights swung sharply to the left, disappearing. Ev’s place. He was almost there.
He rounded the same bend, the trees thinning abruptly to reveal a clearing. A small, run-down farmhouse sat under the weak yellow glow of the porch light. Ev’s blue Silverado was parked near a sagging porch. The black SUV had pulled up right behind it, blocking it in. Its headlights were off now, but the interior dome light was on, empty. The driver’s door was open.
Cal’s blood went cold. He braked, his truck rocking to a halt twenty yards back, still shrouded in tree shadow.
Where was the driver? Where was Ev?
He killed the engine. The silence was immense, broken only by the ticking of his cooling engine and the distant call of a whippoorwill. Then, a crash from inside the house. A thud. The porch light went out.
“Damn it,” he whispered.
He was out of the truck without a plan, his boots crunching on the frozen gravel. He moved toward the side of the house, keeping to the dark. Adrenaline made everything too sharp, too clear: the splintered wood of the porch steps, the torn screen on a window, the sharp, clean scent of pine sap undercut by the smell of damp earth and old neglect.
He peered around the corner toward the back. A figure—bulky, dressed in dark clothes—was wrestling with something at the rear door of the house. No, not something. Someone. Ev. He saw the pale flash of her hands, the dark knot of her hair. A stifled cry.
Cal didn’t shout. He just moved. He closed the distance in a few sprinting steps, his shoulder dipping low. He hit the man just as he turned, a solid, grinding impact that drove them both into the doorjamb with a crack of wood and a whoosh of expelled air. They went down in a tangle of limbs onto the rough wooden planks of a back porch.
The man was strong, and he stank of sweat and cheap cigarettes. He grunted, twisting, an elbow catching Cal in the ribs. Cal grabbed a handful of jacket and hair, driving his own forehead forward. He connected with something hard—a nose, a mouth—and the man cursed, a wet, guttural sound.
“Ev, run!” Cal barked, trying to pin a thrashing arm.
But she didn’t run. He saw her, backlit by a faint light from inside the kitchen, a silhouette holding something long and metal. A tire iron. She stepped over them, her movements terrifyingly calm.
The man beneath Cal saw it too. He bucked with a surge of panic, throwing Cal off balance. He scrambled backwards, crab-walking, a dark smear on his face. He looked from Cal to Ev and the weapon in her hand. Survival won over malice. He lurched to his feet and ran, crashing back through the bushes toward the front of the house.
Cal staggered up, pain flaring in his side. “He’s going for the SUV!”
They both ran for the front yard, Cal ahead, Ev right behind him with the tire iron. The man was already at the driver’s door, yanking it open.
The SUV’s engine roared to life. Its headlights blazed on, blinding them. It lurched forward, not toward the main track, but in a tight, desperate circle, its tires churning up frozen dirt and grass. It was turning around.
It accelerated straight toward Cal’s truck, which was parked blocking the narrow path out.
SUV STOPS ABRUPTLY.
It didn’t slow. It didn’t swerve. It slammed into the front quarter panel of Cal’s Ford with a deafening, wrenching scream of metal. Glass shattered. The SUV’s hood crumpled like paper. Steam erupted from its radiator with a vengeful hiss, pluming white in the headlights.
The driver’s airbag deployed with a cannon-shot thump, a ghostly balloon in the chaotic light.
Then, silence. Just the hiss of steam and the ping of cooling metal.
Cal stood frozen, breath ragged in his throat. Ev moved first, stepping forward, the tire iron held low and ready. The SUV’s driver-side door groaned open. The man stumbled out, dazed, one hand to his forehead. The airbag had done its work. He took two wobbling steps, saw them, and then his legs gave out. He sat down hard in the dirt beside the wrecked grilles of the two vehicles.
Cal walked over, every muscle aching. He looked at the man, not with rage, but with a cold, distant clarity. He was maybe forty, with a raw, bleeding lip and the bewildered eyes of a predator who’d just become prey.
Ev came up beside Cal. She wasn’t even breathing hard. “You know him?”
“Never seen him before.” Cal’s voice was flat. He looked at his own truck, the front wheel bent at a sickening angle. Then he looked at Ev. “You’re not surprised.”
She glanced at the house, then back at the wreck and the dazed man sitting in the dirt. “I am a little,” she said, almost to herself. Then she shook her head. “We need to call the sheriff now. And a tow truck. For both of them.”
She walked toward the man on the ground, not with menace, but with a kind of grim practicality. She kept the tire iron in her hand. “Don’t move,” she said, her voice carrying clearly in the cold air. “You’re going to wait right there.”
Cal pulled his phone from his pocket. The screen was cracked. It still worked. He looked at the wreckage, at the stunned stranger, at this woman who handled a crisis like she was checking items off a list. The cut brake line wasn’t an isolated incident. It was an opening move. And the game, whatever it was, was now sitting in his driveway, steaming and broken, with no way out.
He dialed 911, the electronic beeps absurdly loud. As he waited for the dispatcher to answer, his eyes met Ev’s across the hood of the ruined SUV. She gave him a small, tight nod. It wasn’t gratitude. It was an acknowledgment. He was in it now. All the way.
He flipped his own lights off completely, shoved the truck into gear, and turned onto the dark, rough track after them.