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CHAPTER THREE

The wind howled through broken shutters as Rachel Blackwood pushed open the creaking door of the farmhouse. Dust motes danced in the slanting light, and silence hung heavy in the air. Her boots thumped against the floorboards, the sound hollow in the abandoned space.

"Must've been empty for years," she muttered to herself, eyes flickering across peeling wallpaper and discarded furniture. She could almost smell the decay—a scent that spoke of past lives, now nothing more than whispers caught in cobwebs.

Rachel's hand rested on her holstered sidearm, a comforting weight at her hip as she moved from room to room. She scanned each one with practiced efficiency, instincts honed from a childhood spent learning to read the land and its subtle signals. Her aunt's voice echoed in her memory: "Always watchful, always ready."

The house groaned, settling on its tired foundations. Rachel paused, head tilting. The place was a time capsule, but she wasn't here for nostalgia. She searched for anything amiss, a clue left behind in haste.

A scuff mark. Too fresh among the dust layers. A drawer ajar, contents untouched except for one missing item. Rachel filed these details away, her mind assembling them into a larger picture.

Something wasn't right about this place. Rachel's gut twisted as she stepped into the next room, the floorboards creaking under her boots like a reply to her unspoken questions. The furniture was old and dusty, but this room seemed different, as if it had been used more recently.

She approached a table at the center of the room, the surface cluttered with stacks of paper and a few dusty books. As she reached for one of the books, her hand brushed against an envelope tucked between them. She carefully pulled it out, the corners damp with condensation.

An eviction notice—perhaps the previous owner's?

The place was abandoned, but it still held furniture. Was that a motive? Is someone still protective or possessive of the property? How did that connect with the reverent, ritualistic posing of Heather's body?

Rachel glanced at the date on the eviction notice. Twenty years ago…

The killer waited a long time if this had anything to do with it. She doubted it was connected. Still, she took a photo of the notice before she turned away.

Rachel's gaze cut to the staircase, the banister warped by time. Upstairs then. Each step creaked under her weight.

She moved on the balls of her feet, treading lightly. How many times had she tracked predators through the woods?

She'd gotten her start as a big game hunter—someone hired by local municipalities to take out mountain lions or wolves or troublesome bears. She'd spent a decent amount of time in the Everglades, hunting pythons.

A true hunter knew how to follow a trail. But an even better hunter knew the ins and outs of their prey.

Mountain lions, for instance, were known to be incredibly adept at disappearing into their surroundings. They could vanish from sight in mere seconds, leaving no trace of their passage.

But Rachel had honed her senses over the years, developing a sixth sense for the subtle clues animals left behind. She could spot a fresh paw print or a patch of disturbed grass from miles away.

The worst type of animal to hunt, in her opinion, was an alligator: silent, still, and nearly invisible in the murky waters of the Everglades. The only way to catch one was to know the landscape like the back of your hand and have an intimate understanding of the creature's habits and behavior.

Applying these skills to hunting humans felt…different. It required a different mindset, a different approach. But it was the same game, after all. The same primal instincts at play.

The upstairs hallway was cool and dim, lined with decaying wallpaper and shadows. A faint scent of mold hung in the air, heavy and damp. Rachel knew better than to let her guard down.

She slowed her pace, conscious of every sound she made. Each step was deliberate, calculated. This wasn't about brute force; it was about finesse, strategy.

And now, it was the scent that caught her attention.

She hesitated, pushing back the brim of her hat, her expression as impassive as always.

She inhaled and wrinkled her nose.

Decay.

Fetid meat—the odor lingering on the quietly creaking homes' stagnant air.

She moved along the second floor, one hand trailing the banister as she pushed off, her fingers flexing, ready to pull her sidearm at a moment's notice.

She didn't glance side to side, as she found a steady gaze allowed her to notice movement out of her peripheral vision.

Room by room, she swept the second floor. Empty. Abandoned. Until she reached the last door, paint chipped and handle loose.

She eased it open.

The last door creaked, a reluctant guardian giving way. Rachel stepped into the gloom, her eyes adjusting. A shaft of light cut through the broken window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. Then she saw it.

A badger, a dead one at that, its belly ripped open with savage precision. Even in its mutilated state, she recognized the creature instantly.

The sight arrested her, the metallic scent of blood a sharp note in the musty room. Her hand hovered over her mouth, stifling the instinctive reaction to the odor and the carnage.

"Damn," she muttered under her breath, approaching the carcass. This wasn't nature's work. This was man-made brutality. She crouched beside the animal, studying the jagged edges where flesh met air.

Her mind whirred. The gouges spoke to her, told a story she knew by heart. She'd seen similar wounds before, in the forested outskirts where her youth had been spent tracking, learning.

The badger's paw had been caught in a type of trap known as a conibear trap. A cruel and indiscriminate device that closed with deadly force, meant for larger animals but capable of suffocating smaller creatures like the badger that lay before her.

Rachel straightened, feeling a shiver of rage. This wasn't just a meaningless death, but a symbol.

Rachel could picture it—the steel jaws, the chain. It wasn't meant for a creature this size. It was overkill. Her fingers traced the air above the wound, careful not to contaminate the scene.

And if the killer had access to such tools, what else were they capable of?

Rachel stood, stepping back from the badger. Her gaze swept the room. She needed to see beyond the immediate. She needed to understand the connection.

She swept her gaze across the worn floorboards, looking for disturbances, imprints left behind by careless feet or a dragged heel. Years of tracking fugitives had honed her senses, and she read rooms like others read books—a story in every scuff, a secret in each shadow.

"Come on," she muttered under her breath, willing the evidence to speak. The air was thick, almost palpable, as if it too held its breath, waiting for her to uncover what lurked beneath its surface.

Then, her eyes snagged on something—scuff marks near the window. A disrupted arc in the dust and grime that shouldn't be there. Pulse quickening, Rachel crouched by the disturbance.

"Hello, what's this?" Her fingertips hovered above the marred ground, tracing the lines without touching. She noted the pattern, the directionality of the marks. They spoke of haste, of a sudden shift, a pivot.

And there, the window—ajar. It hung crooked on its hinges, a sliver of the outside world peeking through the gap. She leaned in, nose almost touching the splintered wood, inspecting the latch. It bore scratches, fresh metal gleaming from under a paint fleck. Forced open. Recently.

Rachel's nostrils flared as she inhaled, searching for a scent, a clue carried on the air. But it was just the musty tang of neglect and the faint, coppery smell of old blood that tickled her senses. Only silence answered her unspoken questions.

Rachel crouched low, her gaze slicing through the broken pane. The landscape sprawled before her—a canvas of dry sand and withered grass. Wind whispered secrets across the barren expanse. And there it was—the faintest disturbance in the earth's crust, a trail of dirt snaking away from the house.

Across the roof of the adjoining shed first. She could see bent aluminum. Someone had climbed the shed to reach the second floor, then come this way.

Tracks.

The pattern was irregular, too heavy for an animal, too erratic for the wind. Human. Her pulse quickened.

Rachel's breath hitched, and then she climbed through the window, stepping cautiously across the shed's flimsy aluminum roof, and then dropped onto the far more comfortable and familiar ground.

"Ethan!" she called.

But before she'd even finished the cry, she heard movement, glimpsing the tall, lanky form of her sandy-haired golden retriever of a man.

He really did have an uncanny knack for anticipating Rachel's movements.

"Tracks," she said the moment her partner stepped around the side of the shed.

"Show me," Ethan replied, the lines of his face set in grim resolve.

Rachel led Ethan towards the trail she had spotted from the elevated perch of the window, their boots crunching on the hard, dry ground.

"See here?" she said, pointing at the disturbance. "It's too regular to be an animal, and too messy to be the wind. Someone was here, and they were in a hurry."

Ethan knelt down, studying the print. "Looks like they were wearing some kind of boot. Not a cowboy boot though," he said, squinting. "I think I can make out a pattern here."

He traced his fingers along the impression and then stood up, examining it further.

She nodded, impressed. "You're getting better."

He grinned. "Thanks." He then shot her a sidelong glance. We're gonna wait for backup, coordinate a search team and do this the right way, right?"

Rachel snorted, then began pacing into the desert, following the trail

"Yeah… that's what I thought," Ethen muttered, following along behind her.

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