46. SKYE

Cascade, Idaho

At first, I stayed hidden with April and the girls, terror squeezing me like a tube of toothpaste as I heard him get closer. I knew he couldn't see me, but part of me was certain that if I poked my head up over the fallen log, I'd see those dark eyes lock with mine.

Meghan didn't seem to share my irrational fears. She stood where she was next to us, arms wrapped around herself like a desperate hug as if trying to hold herself together.

April had been right to tell the girls a bear was chasing us. Because that's exactly what he sounded like, thumping his way down the deer paths, cracking branches and making that angry, awful noise in his throat. He sounded just like an animal: an animal hell-bent on tearing someone apart.

The girls stayed completely still and silent, the only movement the quaking of their little bodies and the heaving of their chests.

Kimmie had her face turned toward the dirt, her body tucked most of the way under April's arms. Emma was huddled at the edge, her blue Elsa shirt clutched tight in April's grasp as her chest rose and fell in fast, shaky gasps.

He drifted a little farther, then a little closer. He was sweeping the area.

When he stopped, a stone's throw away, I finally couldn't help myself. I looked in the direction Meghan was facing, eyes wide, and saw him standing just like I'd feared, staring back at us.

He was breathing hard, his mouth open in a gaping scowl as he caught his breath and looked down the deer path that forked in front of him. Did he see us? Did he hear the girls? It might not matter. Because if he went any farther in this direction, he would walk right past us. And he would see them.

In his right hand, he held the multitool, gripped tight. His gaze traveled down the narrow paths in front of him, and I tried to see what he saw.

There were no footprints in that direction. No disturbed ground. We'd come from the other side of the path. I was almost positive he couldn't see any sign of us. Not yet.

He made a noise low in his throat and took a step forward.

Emma let out the barest whimper, and April clutched the Elsa shirt harder, giving it a little shake.

He stopped and listened, scanning again.

That's when Meghan leapt forward.

At first I thought she was going to attack him, like Brecia had the night before after he dug the graves. But then she was next to his ear.

"They couldn't have made it this far. They're way, way back. You went too far," she screamed at him, matching the wildness I could see in his eyes.

He continued staring straight ahead. Emma was quiet. The woods around us were quiet. I willed the birds to start back up, willed a real bear to walk down the path toward all of us. Of course they did not. There was something far more dangerous here.

There was only silence and the sound of his heavy breathing.

I curled back up next to Emma, hoping somehow she felt the invisible buffer on her other side. She didn't make another noise, but I could tell by the way her chest was trembling that she was silently crying.

Kimmie was so still, tucked under April's shoulder, that I could barely see her shallow breaths. I put my mouth close to Emma's ear, whispering assurances I didn't believe.

"The bear won't get you, baby," I told her. The bear got me. "Your mama is here, and she's gonna protect you." Sometimes, nobody can stop the bad thing. "Just hang on for a little longer, okay? Don't make a sound." He's coming this way.

The sound of footfalls on pine needles started again. I braced and tried to get closer to Emma, whispering the same words I half-believed over and over again, beneath the sound of Meghan—and now Brecia, who had joined her—still screaming at him to turn around. Insisting that this part of the woods was empty. Insisting he'd find them if he just turned around and went back the way he'd come.

Then I heard the most glorious noise. "MOTHER-FU—," he screamed in frustration, the word barely intelligible and cutting out as it ripped through him and turned into a howl.

The sound of crashing footsteps moved away from us as he barreled back toward the road and the minivan.

April waited until she heard the distant sound of the engine turning over and the whisper of the tires on the dirt road until she released her grip on the girls and shakily stood up, turning her tear-filled eyes toward her two terrified babies.

"The . . . bear . . . is gone?" Kimmie whimpered.

"It sounded like he was saying words," Emma managed in a tremulous voice, looking at April with the widest hazel eyes I'd ever seen.

April blinked back the tears and grabbed their hands. "What matters is that he went away. And that we're almost safe. You're both so brave. Brave girls," she whispered again as the words caught in her throat. "Can you run with me one more time?"

The two blond heads bobbed.

I looked up at Brecia and Meghan, who were still standing where he'd been just moments earlier—a stone's throw away from where we'd all been crouching beside the big log.

There was a new, steely determination in the air. Meghan wasn't hugging herself anymore. In fact, she looked like she'd just caught fire. From the half-smile on Brecia's face, she could feel it too.

The scales were tipping. They hadn't landed yet. But they were tipping, with a little pressure from invisible hands.