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The sudden darkness pressed against the backs of Hannah Sheridan’s closed eyelids. Sensing the change, her body woke from her restless nightmares.
Thirty-four-year-old Gavin Pike picked out flowers for his mother.
It made her happy. And when she was happy, things went easier for him.
He’d just finished his night shift as a correctional officer at the Berrien County Correctional Facility in Baroda, Michigan. He enjoyed working nights.
Including the camera that he accessed on his secret phone so he could watch her anytime he wished. In the middle of a staff meeting. At dinner with his mother. Working the job. It always gave him a little thrill. A buzz better than a hit of crack cocaine.
Each three-finger segment represented approximately an hour. Still three hours until sundown.
After five brutal years, someone was finally here to save her.
snow should never be eaten for hydration. The energy required by the body to heat and liquefy the snow caused further dehydration and increased the chance of hypothermia.
He wasn’t worried. He was a skilled tracker. A stalker who’d honed his craft over months and years and dozens of victims.
He’d studied people long enough to learn their weaknesses, their mental defenses and justifications, their failures and temptations and self-deceptions, which allowed someone like him to move freely among them.
His go-bag contained forty-eight hours of emergency supplies—MREs, high-calorie protein bars, a Lifestraw water filter, water purification tablets, a first-aid kit, duct tape, a pair of goggles, two thermal survival blankets, extra wool socks and underwear, waterproof matches, a flint, and a Ziploc bag of Vaseline-coated cotton ball fire starters, sewing kit and multi-tool, a headlamp and flashlight, extra batteries, compass and paper maps, and three spare magazines for his Glock.
hemostatic gauze and Celox blood-clotting granules.
He kept a rubber doorstop in his go-bag for extra security when he traveled anywhere away from home.
“December twenty-seventh.”
“Two thousand twenty-four.
She was taken on December 24th, 2019.
Hannah’s own chocolate-brown hair, forest-green eyes, and fair, freckled skin.
His small everyday carry case was still in his coat pocket. It contained his multi-tool, stainless steel tactical pen, small LED flashlight, two lighters, small folding knife, and a handkerchief wound with more paracord.
He believed in being ready for anything. Nothing would take him by surprise. Nothing would ever leave him feeling helpless or defenseless again.
He was coming for her, for what she carried inside her. Because of that, he’d never stop. Not until he found her and got what he wanted. Then he’d gut her like the poor creature he’d left for her in the snow.
“Alone is a state of mind, nothin’ else. You remember that. So is fear.”
“Child, we’re all running from somethin’. I learned long ago not to live in fear of the next boogeyman. Let them come, I say. I have plenty of ammo.”
No use gettin’ all misty-eyed for the things dead and gone. It’s the living that matter now.”
She couldn’t think about what happened last time. What he’d done.
“There’s two kinds of fear. Healthy fear keeps you alive. It’s that gut instinct we women tend to ignore. You listen to that, you keep breathin’. Fear warns you to pay attention. To get out. To stand your ground and fight. Fear’s the body’s warnin’ system. Without it, we’re the deer trapped in the middle of the road stunned by oncomin’ headlights. Roadkill every time.”
“That second kinda fear takes hold of you and don’t let go. It sinks its claws in and turns you into somethin’ you’re not. That fear destroys you from the inside out.”
Always the soldier, watching over her.
Outrage coursed through him. At her. At all the people in Fall Creek he loathed and bitterly resented. His mother. His brother. And especially Noah Sheridan.
He chose druggies and whores and homeless street rats that no one cared about.
he’d parked behind her Camry on that deserted road that Christmas Eve, he’d felt a thrill like he’d never felt before. He knew who she was before he’d even gotten out of his truck.
They all knew Hannah Sheridan. They all believed she was dead and gone.
Liam watched her steadily, his gaze unrelenting. “What does he want?”
“He wants me. He wants this.” She gestured at her belly. “He’s going to cut it out, and then he’s going to kill me. He can’t let me live. It’s like—like as long as I’m alive, he loses. And he can’t bear losing control of anything.”
And just like that, she was a cop’s wife, about to be a mother, stranded in a tiny backwoods township in southwest Michigan—cut off entirely from the life and dreams she’d known.
He was the brother of her husband’s best friend.
