“There!” he yelled. “On the left! Stop!”

Mike Underwood steered to the right shoulder, shifted to neutral, set the parking brake and killed the engine. The El Camino rocked as Luke and Ty Rowley jumped to the ground. Ten seconds later, they all stood in a group at the front bumper.

“That deadfall right there,” Luke said, pointing to a tree that had fallen years ago—maybe decades ago, given the moss and weeds that were growing out of the trunk. “That’s where we left the road to go into the woods.”

Victoria was impressed that Luke didn’t wait for a response before he ran forward and climbed the berm that separated the forest from the pavement. She was right behind him. “Make sure we all see the blazes we’re looking for, in case we get separated,” Victoria said.

Fifty yards in, Luke pointed to a vertical stripe that had been scraped out of the bark of a tree. It was still bright white because it was new, but in a few weeks, no one would even know it was there. “That’s it.”

As they got deeper into the forest, the blazes became more frequent because the deeper you go, the easier it was to get lost.

“How far in, Luke?” It was Ty Rowley.

“I don’t know. And please quit asking me that.”

“We shouldn’t be talking,” Victoria said. “We’re making enough noise as it is.”

The air rippled with the sound of distant gunshots.

“Run, everybody!” Victoria commanded. “We’re out of time.”

* * *

Caleb sat crouched in a ball, trying to be invisible, at the base of a tree that rose from a rocky sinkhole. He couldn’t think of what else to do. Grubbs and his family had guns. Caleb had a knife. Even if he could shoot back to defend himself, he’d be stupidly outnumbered. Hiding seemed to be the only good strategy. If he could hold out till nightfall, maybe he could find his way back to town.

His head was pounding from the split in his skin over his forehead, and the bruised eye didn’t help.

The bleeding had slowed by a lot, but it hadn’t yet stopped. He wasn’t worried about bleeding out or anything like that, but it was messy and sticky—

Blood trails.

The thought caused his chest to seize. He was leaving a trail of blood that would lead straight to him. Grubbs and his team were living in the woods, for God’s sake. That meant they knew how to hunt, and one of the basic skills of tracking wounded game is to follow the blood trail.

“Shit,” he whispered. “I can’t stay here.”

A rip of rifle shots split the quiet of the forest, and Caleb hunkered lower. Another five or six shots followed, and he tried to make himself smaller still. But no bullets impacted near him.