Watcher in the Woods (Rockton #4)(72)

“Hmm?”

He nods, and I catch a glimpse of a dark shape. He opens his mouth with, “Hey, we—”

I cut him off by gripping his arm. He looks over at me. I shake my head. He frowns. I shake it again, and he peers at the figure long enough to realize it is not Dalton.

I release his arm, and his hand goes for his gun. I’m already gripping mine.

Again, Anders and I communicate through seamless gestures and expressions. A frown. A jerked chin. A gaze cutting left. A nod. It’s not even so much an attempt to be silent as it is almost second nature, an effortless telepathy, our minds working so in sync that we don’t need to whisper a plan. It’s my plan, but he does consider a moment before nodding, assessing and agreeing rather than simply following the chain of command.

Anders stays where he is, still crouched, moving to one knee as he watches that still figure.

It’s nowhere near dark yet, but the sun has begun its descent, long shadows stretching through the forest. The figure is nestled in one of those, making it little more than a featureless blob. I can tell it’s human. I can also tell it isn’t tall enough to be Dalton.





THIRTY

The figure moves. It’s hunched down, creeping forward, gaze on the clearing where we were sitting. It stops, and its head tilts, and something in that tilt suggests it’s a woman.

She starts forward again. Soon she’ll be close enough to spot Anders poised on one knee, looking straight at her. Through the undergrowth, he catches my eye, and I make a split-second decision. I tell him to turn around. Turn his back on the approaching figure. He does, without hesitation, and my breath catches, heart thumping harder. He trusts me implicitly. Now I need to prove I deserve that. I lift my gun, finger still off the trigger.

I take another step. The woman creeps forward and then ducks her head, as if to see through an opening. She must spot Anders, because she goes still. Then she sees that he has his back to her. She reaches up, and my gut goes cold. There’s something long and dark in her hand.

My mouth opens to shout a warning to Anders. Then she pulls back a branch for a better view, and she uses the hand holding the object. It’s not a gun. I squint. The object is black, maybe a foot long, thin enough that she can move that branch while gripping it. Thinner than a knife. Lighter too, from the way she moves it. A stick?

My gaze moves to her other hand. She’s holding something in it, too. Something round. A rock? A stick and a rock?

Anders keeps his back to her, and she takes another step. I can’t see her face, but I see her clothing. It’s hide, which isn’t unusual out here. Some settlers wear well-mended jeans and shirts. Others wear clothing homemade from hides. The homespun clothes are works of art, craftsmanship well beyond what we buy down south. What this woman wears is another thing altogether. The hides have been roughly cut out and roughly sewn, the sort of thing you might expect to find on someone lost in the forest for years, forced to create her own clothing lest she freeze.

Yet this woman isn’t lost. Not in the literal sense of the word. She’s chosen to be here, like the settlers. She hasn’t chosen their lifestyle, though. She’s chosen one beyond my comprehension.

She is a hostile. That’s our name for them. Those who go into the forest and revert to something that I’d call animalistic, if Dalton wouldn’t mutter that’s an insult to animals. When I met hostiles, though, I didn’t see people who’d willfully reverted to something baser. No more than I’d see someone ranting on a street corner, lost in the throes of mental illness, and decide they’d chosen that. Yes, people do choose to not treat their mental illness, deciding the cure is worse than the disease. Yes, people do choose to live on the streets. But I don’t believe they choose that—wandering the cities, lost in the mazes of their own disturbed minds. They make a choice, and it turns into something they wouldn’t have imagined. I’ve talked about my past as falling down a dark pit. That’s an exaggeration. The true pit is the woman I see before me.

She takes one more step, and a lone strip of sunlight illuminates her face. With no start of surprise, I realize I know her. The moment I saw that it was a woman, I’d thought immediately of Maryanne, who we’d met in the forest a week ago. Shot by Val, she’d taken off into the forest before we could stop her. Now she’s here, and I proceed as carefully as I can, knowing one false move will send her fleeing like a spooked deer.

I move forward, and so does she, slipping toward Anders, who still stands with his back to her. She’s focused on him, and even when a leaf crunches under my foot, she doesn’t notice. She takes two more steps. Then she crouches, dropping from view. A moment later, she rises, her hands now empty, and she steps backward, retreating.

Another step. Then another. I match each, my feet coming down in time with hers. Soon I’m so close I can smell the sweaty musk of her. Another step, and I’ll be able to touch her. To grab her.

I force myself to stop. Then I holster my gun and say, “Maryanne?”

She wheels, leaves crackling. Her hands fly up. Mine do too, rising to show her they’re empty.

“It’s me,” I say. “Eric’s girl.”

A curse sounds to my left. Maryanne spins that way. It’s Anders. He’s turned, and when he saw her, he’d let out a curse of shock. Horror fills his face, as if he’s stumbled onto something far worse than a scavenged body.