Chapter 63

I STOOD FROZEN, WATER-soaked and afraid. But I was also proud of myself. Confident. It must have been the way Molly felt so many times in her life. I swore I had to be smiling. I could feel the muscles in my jaws constricting, tightening. A smile, despite everything that had happened to me in the woods.

My drenched body shivered.

I shined the light upstream. Through the trees and the thick brush, I could make out the clapboard farmhouse. A dull beam of flashlight lit up the exterior wall. Just ahead of me was a narrow trail. I burst into an all out sprint along that trail in the direction of the house

Body tingled, head buzzed, lungs filled with oxygen. My feet moved rapidly beneath me, the pain in my legs having all but disappeared. Not ten feet of trail separated me from the house in the woods when a hand reached out, grabbing hold of my long blonde hair.