Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
The girls were always worried about the coyotes they heard howling off in the distance. Even though the farm animals were locked up at night.
“No one is getting their hands on my girl,” I told her as we moved down the steps and through our little gated yard.
The lights were off at Kit’s house. She’d been busting her ass trying to plant a winter cover crop to replenish the soil, and she’d given herself a little heat headache. I wasn’t surprised she’d gone to bed early.
Ariah’s house had one light on in the living room. Likely so the dogs weren’t in the dark since she was out for the night. She had a dinner planned with her parents and sister. I even offered to let the dogs out if I didn’t see her come home by ten.
“It’s nice out, huh?” I asked.
The air had taken on hints of fall, the wind crisp when it blew, heavy with the scent of turned dirt and a hint of moldering leaves from the underbrush in the woods.
I couldn’t wait to see the area ablaze in shades of red, yellow, and orange; to pick pumpkins and winter squashes to make soup and pies with. To take walks with Nave through the park again, warm drinks in our hands.
There was so much to look forward to.
We’d moved past the gardens and the animal enclosures and were walking through the orchard, the air smelling a little sweeter here. Like apples and beaches, likely from ones fallen and busted open on the ground.
Kit or Ria would collect them and feed them to the animals.
Just because we wouldn’t eat them doesn’t mean they won’t.
I was just about to head back, figuring that Edith’s little legs must have been getting tired.
When something, I don’t know, pricked at me.
It was the silence.
Like the crickets and cicadas and even the wind that had been blowing a moment ago were all suddenly holding their breaths.
My fingers tightened on Edith’s leash, not sure what felt wrong, but wanting to be ready to grab her and run if I needed to.
The girls had mentioned bears in the area.
Could there be one lurking? Looking to raid the gardens or the bird feeders?
Was it just a little deer family, and I was letting my imagination run away with me?
One beat, another.
My free hand slipped lower, instinctively covering my stomach. Three months only, give or take. There wasn’t much to show for it. But everything in me screamed to protect the baby.
Edith had frozen in front of me, sniffing the air, her body language looking suddenly stiffer, more anxious.
It wasn’t just me.
A twig snapped. My heart stopped.
My gaze scanned the trees, expecting a large snout, big yellow eyes.
My reptile brain screamed.
Predator.
Run.
But you couldn’t outrun a bear. You didn’t want to try, to potentially make yourself look like prey.
A shadow moved. My belly flipped.
It was a predator who stepped out from between the trees.
Just a very different one from what I’d been expecting.
For just a moment, my mind refused to accept what I was seeing. Who I was seeing.
But a couple of blinks confirmed I wasn’t just imagining things.
He was there. Just a few yards away.
The same features.
The same hair.
The same cold eyes.
The same pristine white clothes. Too clean for this place. But there he was regardless. In my woods. On my homestead. My safe haven.
The air thinned, vanished.
I couldn’t breathe.
And all I could hear was the blood roaring in my ears.
Edith yipped, jerking me back from my shock.
My hand released her leash instinctively. If I couldn’t save myself, I could at least save her.
Edith had a solid sense of self-preservation, taking off at a dead run back toward the front of the property. She was completely out of sight within a few yards.
“Lolly,” Ben called.
I staggered back a step.
“How did you find me?” I asked, my strangled voice foreign to my own ears.
He smiled, tight.
“Did you think you could hide from me? You were cleverer than the others, I will give you that. But you had help, didn’t you?”
He stepped forward.
I moved back.
My foot wobbled on something round. An apple, probably.
“You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to come home.”
He was so calm, so confident, so sure that he would take me again.
He was expecting compliance.
He was expecting the girl I used to be.
But I wasn’t her anymore.
And I was never going back.
I ducked before I could think it through.
My hand closed around the apple, finding it wet and gritty from rot and dirt.
A part of me would have recoiled once.
This new me gripped it harder as I stood, cocked back, and sent it sailing.
It whacked hard at the center of his chest, leaving a dirty spot right there on his perfect shirt.
His gloved hand went up instinctively, wiping frantically at the spot. He only accomplished making the stain spread, dragging a frustrated grunt out of him.