Terrified, she pushed open the door to the dilapidated cabin and squeezed into stale darkness, away from the something on the trail—the rustling simultaneous with the swishing of her clothes.
No. Not simultaneous—there were always those few milliseconds of echoes intruding into her breathless pauses! She knew the stories. Push them back. Don’t think about—
Safe here—just close the door. Someone will come. When? Troy would never quit fishing with daylight remaining. Would he come back this way? Or would he slip farther down the river and bypass this trail?
Those stories—no! Yes. News stories of people—always little people. Kids, small women, attacked in a deserted area just as—
Why had she decided to find Troy? It was a silly whim, a stupid, stupid mistake. Her news could have waited—for weeks or months! Now—
She surveyed cluttered forms shaping in dim light: lumpy old spotty camelhair coats on a sagging cot in a corner, a pair of missing boards at the back that allowed filtered twilight.
Goose bumps rose—she had smelled something like this before. A zoo?
No! She would not think about that. Should she go back outside, take her chances on the darkening trail? She knew now—she couldn’t stay here.
A weapon—she had to find something—
A squirmy sound! Camelhair moved, mewled at a new presence.
She mouthed a voiceless scream as a large tawny shadow blocked the twilight and gathered fiery yellow reflections of her little lost soul.
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Todd, detective lieutenant, has retired from St. Louis, Missouri and has moved to Ford Valley, Arizona. When Todd’s ex-wife is killed in a car accident, Todd fights for custody of his teenage daughter. She has bee
