Page 110 of Silent Threat
Time to get away from the madman before he caught up with her.
“Annie!” The call came out of the darkness from way too near. And, before she could turn around, Dan barreled into her.
They crashed to the muddy ground. She had the presence of mind to roll away. A second later they were both on their feet again.
In a flash of lightning, she could see the gun in Dan’s hand.Now or never.She flowed into the one good self-defense move she knew, her one kick.
Pain shot up her leg, but Dan went down again, sprawled at her feet.
She kicked his hand with everything she had. He lost hold of the gun, but the weapon didn’t slide away nearly far enough. And he was scrambling up. Annie ran.
Her body hurt from the fall from the deer blind, and from Dan’s tackle. Branches smacked her face. She slipped and, once again, nearly twisted her ankle. She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow.
“Annie!”
She hoped the storm helped her blend in. Dan couldn’t just look for movement. Everything moved in the gale-force winds.
In the end, that became Annie’s downfall.
She knew the woods. She navigated by landmarks—a fallen log, an odd-shaped tree. But all the trees were twisting, presenting different shapes. She could barely see shapes. She could barely see anything.
She thought she’d been cutting back to the walking path, but the walking path was nowhere to be seen. Not daring to stop, in case Dan was close behind, she kept moving in the general direction she thought the buildings should be.
Soon she was gasping for air from the effort, not sure how much farther she’d be able to run, but she still hadn’t reached Hope Hill.
“Annie!”
She shuddered at the shout. She was lost in the woods. And the madman chasing her was closing in.
Could she find cover? Could she shelter in place until morning? Hide?
Except, she could only see for seconds at a time when lightning crackled across the sky. She hadn’t seen any suitable shelter so far. At least running kept her warm. Temperatures were steadily dropping. If she stopped, she’d be exposed to hypothermia.
She stumbled, ignored the pain in her ankle, and kept going. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t stop moving if she wanted. Nerves and fear pushed her forward. Panic was making her decisions.
She cut through some bushes and realized the ground was tilting slightly downhill. Did that mean she was heading toward the facilities at last?
She slipped, tried to catch herself, and failed.Don’t break anything.But instead of hard ground, she hit water and immediately went under.
She touched bottom pretty fast, then kicked herself back up to the surface. No way she was at the pond. A natural pond stood at the northern edge of the Hope Hill property, but she knew she hadn’t been moving in that direction.
She gasped for air, the water too cold. Then lightning flashed, showing her where she was. A giant tree, blown over by the storm, had twisted out of the ground. An enormous root ball towered above her, a huge, thick spiderweb. She was trapped in the rain-filled root-ball crater. The hole was no more than six feet in diameter and probably not much deeper than that. Just enough to drown in.
In the dark again, Annie reached blindly for the edge.
The muddy bank crumbled under her panicked fingers.
She was chilled through to the bone. Even her insides shivered as she tried to claw herself out. She wasnotgoing to drown in what amounted to an oversize puddle.
Except that, try as she might, she couldn’t get a firm grasp. Every time she grabbed for a handhold, she came away with a handful of mud and slipped back into the cold water.
Cole had his eyes on a stand of yews when Ambrose stepped out from behind them with his gun aimed at Cole’s head.
Cole dove to the side, hit the ground, and rolled in mud until he was behind the cover of a log large enough to hide him. He regretted few things as much as he regretted not being able to bring a gun to Hope Hill, although he understood their strict no-weapons policy.
He heard a shot, but so muted, as if through a silencer. It missed him. If Ambrose was moving around to get a better angle, Cole heard none of that.
He rolled to the left into an indentation in the ground deep enough to hide him, hoping he was rolling away from the man instead of toward him. The hole was filling with water. The muck helped cover him.
