Chapter 5 - The Noose Tightens
I burst through the cabin door. “We have to move! Now!”
David jumped up, grabbing his coat. “Did they track you?”
“Yes. They’re coming.”
I scooped up Mia, who clung to me like a koala. We ran to the car. As David turned the key, the engine sputtered. He cranked it again. A sickly grinding noise echoed through the woods.
“The starter,” David panicked. “It’s been going out for weeks!”
“Try it again!” I screamed.
He cranked it. Nothing.
Through the trees, the crunch of heavy tires on gravel echoed up the dirt road. Headlights cut through the encroaching dusk. The black SUV.
“Out of the car!” I commanded.
We abandoned the vehicle, sprinting into the dense, darkening forest. Rain began to pour again, masking the sound of our footsteps but soaking us to the bone. I carried Mia, my muscles burning with lactic acid, as we scrambled up a steep, muddy ravine.
Below us, two men in tactical gear stepped out of the SUV. One of them held a silenced pistol. The other held a thermal scanner.
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“Spread out,” a cold, gravelly voice ordered. “They can’t have gone far.”
We pressed ourselves into the hollowed-out roots of a massive oak tree, praying the mud would mask our heat signatures.
