Then silence, only for a moment, before she heard Pierce far back in the darkness, cursing and trying to reload the gun. There were metallic clicks and scraping sounds. He swore again, the sound full of frustration.

“Keep going,” Sam hissed, barely whispering. “Far away as we can get.”

“What is this?” Dani asked.

“He’s one of them. Tell you later.”

“What are you talking about?”

Before he could answer, the cornfield around them flared to life with faint light. Dani turned her head and looked back, in unison with Sam.

Pierce, two hundred feet behind them, had turned on a flashlight. For the first second it shone straight down at the ground; then it jerked upward and began sweeping over the tops of the corn shoots.

“Down,” Sam whispered.

Dani threw herself flat, pulling Lauren down with her. All three of them landed in the soft soil half a second before the stalks above them lit up. The beam swept over them very slowly, a searchlight taking its time. Even after it had gone past, Sam shook his head.

“Don’t move yet.”

No more than three or four seconds had passed before the light swept back above their position, creeping as slowly as before. It slipped away, then came back a third time, moving faster now.

Then it was gone—pointed somewhere else, at least. Dani could still see its peripheral glow on the highest leaves.

She counted to five, turned and met Sam’s eyes; he stared back, then nodded and poked his head up above the stalks. Dani did the same.

Pierce was still standing where he’d been, two hundred feet behind them. He was shining the light all over the ground in front of him, darting it back and forth in sharp little arcs.

Then it froze. He stared at whatever he’d found with it.

And started walking.

“He sees our footprints,” Sam whispered.

“We need to run,” Dani said.

Sam shook his head. “He’ll hear us. And he’ll chase us. Hell, with a gun he doesn’t even have to catch us.”

Pierce was moving slowly, stopping every few feet to be sure he could still see the tracks, but as Dani watched, she found herself waiting for the inevitable: any second now, the man would simply break into a sprint along the straight-line path the footprints formed.

“Shit…” Sam whispered. No doubt he’d drawn the same conclusion.

“Sam, we have to run.”