Chapter 58

DOWN FLAT ON MY back, I sucked wet air through a gaping mouth. I opened my eyes, set my left hand onto the ground and pushed myself up onto my feet. Stuffing my damaged hand into my jeans, I approached the tree line.

Bushwhacking almost blindly through the thick greenbrier and second growth saplings, the sound of stream water grew more prominent with each step forward. I had no choice but to swallow the pain, ignore the five senses and focus instead on the anger, on the determination to reach Michael.

But there was something I had to do before anything else. My nose was broken. I couldn’t leave it like that. If I was going to get to Michael, I needed to breathe through it. Without thinking about it, I cupped the broken nose inside my two hands. Supporting the fleshy nostril portion between opposing thumbs, I sucked a deep breath through my mouth, cracked the cartilage back in place.

I released a strained shriek that shot off into the valley.

But when the sting went away, I sensed only a dull soreness where the skin was split.

There was one more thing I had to do. It dawned on me that maybe if I opened up the flashlight, shifted the batteries around, there’d be enough power left in them to give me light. Even if only for the few minutes it took to get to the house. That’s exactly what my father used to do when I was little and the power went out. He’d make the flashlight batteries last longer by shifting them around inside the tube. I unscrewed the end, poured the batteries out into my hand, reversed their original order and reloaded them into the tube. Holding my breath, I switched the light on.

It worked. I had light. Not a strong light, but enough of a dull yellow glow for me to see my way through the darkness.

I took off.

Trekking through the thick growth, the rain poured down even harder than before. It came down with such force, it penetrated the tree cover, raindrops shooting and scooting between the now illuminated leaves like a spray of bright yellow paint. The rain smacked against my face, stinging the laceration on my nose. For the first time since having been dropped into the woods, I felt like I had to come to grips with my exhaustion.

I was dead tired. Tired and wired. I was living a very bad dream and all was as much surreal as it was the real deal. Branches slapped and jabbed at my face. It was as if the trees had eyes and saw me coming. But I didn’t feel the pain and sting anymore. I felt only the urgent need to get to Michael.

I knew then that Whalen was going to kill us. That it was only a matter of time. I didn’t want to die alone. Not at the hands of the devil. I wanted to die alongside Michael; wanted to die in his arms, the two of us married once more.