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A branch snaps somewhere behind me.

I look over my shoulder.

The trail curves between the trees, empty as far back as I can see. Wind moves through the canopy overhead, shaking loose a few leaves that skitter across the dirt.

My stomach tightens again.

I stand there for another second, listening, but all I hear is the wind and the distant rush of the river below.

This is ridiculous.

I've spent the better part of two weeks immersed in a murder investigation. Hypervigilance is an entirely predictable response. If I continue assigning significance to every broken branch in a forest, I'm going to have to formally apologize to several squirrels.

It could also be a moose, though. Which would terrify me just as much as if it were a human.

I turn around.

Three steps later, something moves behind me again.

I don't have time to turn back to see what it is.

The impact catches me high on the back of the head with a sickening burst of pressure, and the entire world flashes white.

My knees give out.

For one strange second, I'm still conscious enough to understand what's happening to my body but not enough to stop it. My vestibular system fails spectacularly. The trail tilts beneath me, my hand reaches for something that isn't there, and my shoulder hits the ground hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.

Pain arrives a fraction of a second later.

Hot. Blunt. Radiating from the back of my skull.

My fingers scrape uselessly through dirt and leaves as I try to push myself up. My arm doesn't cooperate. Neither does my vision. The trees above me split into two overlapping forests and then drift lazily back together.

A shoe enters my field of vision.

I try to lift my head.

The movement sends nausea rolling through me so violently that I drop back down.

I think about Casey.

Not the Casey from the tapes.

Casey on the ground.

Casey afraid.

Casey realizing too late that whatever she'd seen had stopped being something she could simply record and walk away from.

Get up.

I dig my fingers into the dirt.

Get up, Serena.

The shoe comes closer.

I try to see who it belongs to, but the edges of my vision are already folding inward, the forest disappearing behind a narrowing tunnel of gray.