Chloe Carter's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

Chloe crouched behind the sedan and worked out the math. She could not outrun him downhill. She did not know the woods well enough to lose him in a straight line. But he was watching her, only her. If she pulled him away from the car, she could circle back, dig it out, and drive. She left the duffel. She took the keys from her pocket, the ones with the old Buick tag her mother had passed her years ago, and shoved them deep into her coat so they wouldn't jingle. Then she stood up where he could see her, showed him her empty hands, and walked straight into the trees above the cabin. He moved. She heard the crunch of his boots start along the tree line and swing after her. Not fast. Steady. The way a man walks when he knows the ending. The old logging road cut across the slope a hundred yards up. She found it under a skin of snow, two ruts full of frozen puddles and broken branches. She followed it away from the cabin, loud on purpose, snapping wood under her heel every few steps. Behind her, his footfalls kept the same patient pace. She went a quarter mile. Then she stopped snapping branches and started listening. That was when she saw the cat. It stood on a rock shelf above the road, tail low, shoulders loose. Tawny. Bigger than she'd pictured a mountain lion in her head. Its eyes were on the road behind her, not on her. It had been tracking the sound of two people. It had picked the slower one. Chloe did not run. Running was how you died. She stepped sideways off the ruts, into the pines, and lowered herself behind a deadfall. She put her hand over her mouth and breathed through her fingers. She heard him come up the road. His boots. His even breath. He passed her hiding spot without turning his head. He was looking for her tracks in the snow ahead. The cat dropped off the shelf without a sound. She heard him grunt, then shout, then the wet sounds people are not supposed to make. Something metal hit a rock, a knife maybe, skidding. Then a longer sound she made herself stop listening to. She pressed her forehead into the bark and counted to sixty. When she looked, the road was empty except for a dark smear and a drag trail leading off into the brush. Chloe stood up. Her legs shook. She wanted to cry. She got angry instead, because angry would carry her back down the road to her car. She walked the ruts to the cabin the way she'd come. The sedan sat where she'd left it, buried to the rocker panels, waiting. She pulled the keys from her coat and started digging.