Her feet stood frozen for a moment. The same way they had at the top of the stairs back at the shack. What was another five minutes? Just a little more time…

Samantha was safe. Everyone was safe. It was all going to be okay…

Ilse swallowed once. She refused to cower. Not again. She wasn’t a little child anymore. She nodded once to herself. Don’t be stupid…

She ignored the voice, though, and, dragging her feet from the concrete, she stepped off the shoulder and onto the old trail. Then she began to walk, moving hastily along the dusty road, eyes fixed ahead, arms like pistons.

She marched into the old woods, away from the highway, away from her parked car, away from it all and toward fear itself.

Ilse wasn’t a child anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

“Vicarious resolution to trauma,” Ilse murmured softly, answering the thoughts reverberating in her mind. “Projecting interpersonal control on tangential issues.” Dust and dirt crunched beneath her feet as she took the trail, following it along the old concrete barriers lining the nighttime road. “Stupid,” she added at last, channeling her inner Agent Sawyer. “Really, really stupid.”

The streets were empty; the night stretched above and stared down, watchful of the vacant trails. Ilse rubbed at her arms, feeling a chill seep through the soft fabric of her baggy hoodie.

This was not a good idea. How had a quick trip for a bite to eat turned into something so stupid?

And yet, even as she thought it, she continued marching on, eyes ahead, taking the portion of the dirt road that ran parallel to the highway itself, on the other side of the concrete barrier.

A trained psychologist. A licensed therapist. And yet, still, she ignored her own counsel—maybe she’d been too hard on some of her patients over the years. The ones who’d ignored her completely and beaten their own path.

She shivered, remembering how some of those stories had ended.

But still, she marched along the old dirt road, arms at her side now, swinging like pendulums. It had been a while since she’d gotten some decent cardio in. She picked up the pace a bit, speed-walking and breathing in slow, steady patterns.

Fear was a liar. Fear was her enemy. Sometimes, it seemed, even more than her history, her father—even more than Hilda Mueller’s memories. Fear was the true threat.

Stupid though this was, a small part of her felt like this was the only way… No more cowering behind locked doors and shuttered windows. No more double- and triple-checking locks… well, perhaps that would be a harder habit to break. But she refused for fear to be the motivator now. Refused to allow it to control and manipulate as it so often did.

As she stalked along the old road, the same road the killer had been hunting, the same road where two women had been killed, where Samantha had been kidnapped, she could feel the fear rising like a cloud over her. Despite her best intentions, despite her desire to face it head on, fear was stretching across her like a blanket, weighing her movements, suppressing her thoughts, strangling the life from every moment of natural vitality, trying to drown her in sheer panic.