Chapter 5 - The Haunting Truth
The beam of the flashlight swept across the underbrush just fifteen feet away from where Natalie and Liam crouched behind a moss-covered boulder. The harsh white light illuminated the swirling raindrops like descending silver needles, casting eerie, dancing shadows across the tree trunks.
"I know you're up here, nurse," a voice called out through the trees. It wasn't one of the clean-up crew she had heard at the cabin. It was deeper, colder, carrying a terrifying authority that made her blood run cold. "You have something belonging to the Ironwood Syndicate. Bring it back down the trail, and we let you and the boy walk away. Try to play hero, and the mountain becomes a permanent grave for both of you."
Natalie clamped her hand gently over Liam’s mouth, whispering in his ear, Don't make a sound. The boy nodded wide-eyed, his small body trembling against hers.
She glanced down at the ATV. In her panic, she had left the key in the ignition. If they found the machine, the hot engine would give away their exact position.
She needed a distraction.
Groping around the wet forest floor, her fingers brushed against a heavy, rotten branch. Without thinking, she hurled the branch as hard as she could into the brush fifty feet to her right. It landed with a loud, distinct crack against a pile of dry fallen timber.
Instantly, the flashlight beam snapped toward the noise.
"Movement on the left flank! Move in!" the voice barked.
Two pairs of heavy boots crunched rapidly up the trail away from their position, their flashlights sweeping wildly through the trees.
"Now!" Natalie whispered fiercely, grabbing Liam's hand.
She didn't dare use the ATV. Abandoning the machine entirely, she hauled her son deep into the jagged, boulder-strewn ravine that sloped down toward the roaring Blackwood River. The terrain was treacherous, a maze of slick limestone ledges and thorny briars that tore at their clothes. They slid down the embankment on their hands and knees, the roar of the swollen river drowning out the sound of their escape.
After twenty minutes of agonizing descent, they reached the riverbank. The water was a churning, muddy torrent of snowmelt and torrential rain, raging over jagged boulders.
"We have to cross," Natalie panted, staring at the freezing water.
"I can't swim across that, Mama!" Liam cried, tears finally spilling over his cheeks.
"You're riding on my back, buddy. Hold on like a monkey, wrap your legs around my waist, and don't let go," she instructed, her voice laced with an unyielding, desperate steel.
She hoisted him up, tying her waterproof jacket around his chest to secure him to her back. Stepping into the freezing river, the current hit her thighs with the force of a freight train, nearly knocking her off her feet. The water was so cold it felt like knives stabbing into her skin, numbing her legs instantly.
She took one agonizing step at a time, using a sturdy fallen branch as a walking stick to stabilize herself against the brutal current. Halfway across, her foot slipped on a slick underwater boulder, plunging her shoulder-deep into the freezing torrent. Liam screamed, clinging desperately to her neck.
"I've got you! I've got you!" Natalie yelled over the roar of the water, forcing her trembling legs forward until her boots finally struck solid mud on the opposite bank.
Collapsing onto the muddy shore, she untied Liam, checking him over frantically. He was shivering uncontrollably, his lips tinged with a frightening shade of blue. Hypothermia was setting in fast.
"We need shelter. Now," Natalie muttered, scanning the rocky cliff face rising above the riverbank.
Through the veil of rain, she spotted a dark, shadowed indentation in the limestone rock wall—a shallow natural cave, tucked away behind a thick curtain of drooping hemlock branches. It wasn't much, but it was dry, hidden from aerial thermal scans, and protected from the wind.
She half-carried, half-dragged Liam into the cave, pulling a heavy emergency thermal space blanket from her backpack and wrapping it tightly around his shivering body. She huddled close to him, sharing her own body heat, whispering soothing words while her own teeth chattered violently.
As the first faint, gray light of dawn began to bleed through the stormy mountain canopy, a low, guttural growl echoed from the mouth of the cave.
Natalie’s hand snapped to her penlight, her muscles tensing for a final, hopeless fight.
A massive, slate-gray shape stepped out from behind the curtain of hemlock branches. Loose jowls, wrinkled brow, and amber eyes gleaming in the dim light.
May you like
Goliath.
The Neapolitan mastiff was caked in mud, bleeding from a superficial graze on his left shoulder, but he was alive. And trailing right behind him, limping heavily with one hand pressed against his bandaged abdomen and a heavy hunting rifle clutched in the other, was Dante Vance.
