Chapter 10: Behind the Tree (Ella)

Jasper hauled me behind a fallen spruce.

We crouched there, his hand clamped over my mouth, pressing me against his chest. I could hear his heartbeat—fast, but steady, like a drum pulled taut.

Footsteps came up the trail we’d just walked.

More than two people. Three. I heard flashlight beams sweep through the fog, the light passing thirty feet in front of the spruce we were hiding behind.

“They can’t have gone far.” A man’s voice. It was Little Dale, the slick local county deputy I’d seen from a distance a few times. “Fog’s too thick.”

“The woman’s a librarian.” Another voice. “She’ll have dug it out of books, that kind always does.”

“Jasper knows too.” The third voice chuckled, and that laugh turned my stomach. “He’s been in these woods since he was a kid. He knows them better than we do. The hole where we buried things back then—he’ll find it too.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Split into two teams.” Little Dale said. “You come with me up the front. Bobby, you loop around to the creek bed. If they’re hiding, they can only be in those ravines.”

The footsteps split. One group came toward us, one to the right.

Jasper’s hand loosened slightly on my mouth. He leaned to my ear, his breath a feather on my ear: “Once they pass, we go the opposite way. Toward the creek bed.”

I nodded.

His hand didn’t move right away. His palm was rough, calloused, pressed to my lips. I closed my eyes. In that second, I wasn’t afraid of the people outside. I was feeling the warmth of his palm, the vibration of his chest, the way he held his breath low to keep quiet.

He probably realized it too. His hand stiffened, then very slowly, very gently, withdrew.

We didn’t speak. We just crouched shoulder to shoulder behind that spruce, listening to both sets of footsteps recede.

When the woods went quiet again, Jasper counted to twenty, then pulled me up.

We didn’t take the trail. We pushed straight into the thickest brush, cutting toward the creek bed. Branches scraped my face; I didn’t make a sound.

“Back there.” I said quietly as we walked.

“Yeah.”

“How did you know they’d split into two teams?”

“Because there are only three of them.” He said. “Three men going up after two people, they have to split, or they can’t cover ground.” He paused. “When I was seventeen, I saw them split.”

I looked up at him.

“Who were they chasing?”

He was quiet a long time. We passed a thicket of wild blackberries; he held the branches aside for me.

“A fisherman.” He said. “He’d wandered onto that beach by mistake. He didn’t see anything. But they still chased him all night.”

“What happened then?”

“He slid off the bluff.” Jasper’s voice was flat. “Police said he was drunk.”

I stopped.

“Jasper.”

“Yeah.”

“We aren’t going to be chased.” I said. “We aren’t going to slide off a bluff.”

He looked at me in the fog. The fog hid half his eyes, but I could feel him looking.

“Okay.” He said.

We kept going. The creek bed was ahead.