She had to raise her voice above the noise of the chopper as she nudged Dillan with her elbow. “Nah. You go on. I know you’re itching to have your Harrison Ford moment.”
His smile reminded her of a kid who’d just been given money for the ice cream truck.
“For the record, it’s a Tommy Lee Jones moment I’m after. He was the federal agent who was after Ford. And thanks for understanding. If it wouldn’t hurt my back to bend down so far, and if I weren’t scared you’d punch me in the face, I’d kiss you right now.”
“I might go ahead and punch you in the face just for making another short joke.” She gathered her hair in her hand to stop it from whipping around her face.
“That’s my cue!” Dillan lifted a finger. He didn’t bother taking the stairs. He hopped off the porch and hit the ground running.
She shook her head at the skip in his step. Then she shielded her eyes from the frenzy of blowing dirt when the big, black bird hopped into the sky in a wash of hurricane-force winds.
Once the helicopter gained enough altitude, she stepped onto the top step and watched the chopper get swallowed up in the blackness of the night sky. After a while, the engine noise was little more than a distant purr, and all she could see of the aircraft was the rhythmic flash of the white navigation light on its tail.
She alighted onto the second step, intent on rechecking the area between the fields and the house even though she’d already checked ittwice.But before she hit the third step, the hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but now that she was alone—the tactical guys had moved their search around to the left side of the house—and now that the hulking helicopter and its promise of a quick escape had been removed, she had to admit the empty farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with its creaky boards and crumbling paint was spooky as hell.
It wasn’t like it wasabandoned. The recently swept porch, cheery welcome mat, and kid’s toys littering the front yard said whoever owned the property had no intention of being gone for long. But without the living energy of people and animals, the placefeltabandoned.
Abandoned and malevolent and somehow…sentient.
How many movies started as thrillers, with some flinty-eyed FBI agent on the hunt for a known criminal, only for the plot to suddenly devolve into a horror story where said agent was chased through the woods by something that was only supposed to exist in fairy tales to frighten children?
She wrapped her arms around herself. Not so much for the warmth but to hold herself together against the rising tide of unease.
A gust of wind whipped up the leaves collected in the overgrown flowerbed. It brought with it the smell of decaying plant matter and…was that death? Had some animal met its end nearby, and now its carcass sat rotting in the bushes?
The trees seemed to shiver, their branches clawing at the sky as if they, too, sensed something foul and menacing lurking just out of sight.
“Screw this,” she muttered as she hopped back onto the porch and raced around two corners until she’d made it to the back of the house.
She spied the two beams from the tactical team as they continued their sweep. But getting visual confirmation she wasn’t entirely alone didn’t bring as much comfort as she thought it would.
There was a strange weight in the air. It was there at the edge of her awareness, waiting,watching.An electrical tension that made her skin prickle as if the night itself held its breath.
Get it together, Jules. Sheesh.
She squared her shoulders. Blew out a steadying breath. And then it happened.
A shadow moved.
Or…at least shethoughtit did. It was much darker at the back of the house without the porch light cutting through the relentless blackness of the night.
She stared hard, her desperate eyes scanning the area between the house and where the trees loomed out of the ground like silent sentinels that guarded secrets only the night knew.
There it was again.
Movement.
She was sure of it.
Wasting no time slinking farther into the safety of the shadows clinging to the old wooden porch, she pressed her back against the rough siding. Her hand automatically sought the butt of her duty weapon, her fingers curling around the cold metal as her pulse thundered in her ears.
Man or animal?she wondered and opened her mouth to call out to the two tactical guys. But indecision stilled her voice.
What if itwasjust an animal? A deer or a bobcat or maybe even a skunk? How foolish would she feel pulling the agents off their hunt to help her shoo away a harmless woodland creature?
Slipping into a crouch on the porch, she made herself as small as possible as her eyes strained to make sense of the movement across the field.
