Chapter 4 - The Shed in the Woods
The sentence hung in the air like a noose.
I saw you.
Marcus froze on the porch threshold, the rain drenching his shoulders in seconds. His eyes darted from Leo to me, then to Uncle Ray, who was already stepping forward with his fists balled up tight.
"He’s lying!" Marcus barked, his voice cracking. "The kid was asleep in his bed! He didn't see anything!"
"How do you know what he saw if you were supposedly down at the grocery store when she fell, Marcus?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
Marcus didn't answer. He didn't try to explain. He turned on his heel, sprinted down the porch steps, and slammed into the driver’s seat of his black Dodge Ram. The engine roared to life, the tires screeching and tearing up my mother’s front lawn as he reversed into the dark mountain road and vanished into the storm.
"Call the police!" Aunt Martha shrieked. "Call Sheriff Miller right now!"
"No," I said, checking the screen of the burner phone. "Sheriff Miller is Marcus’s first cousin. If Marcus is running, he’s heading to that garden shed to torch the evidence Rachel mentioned. Mom, keep Leo inside. Lock the deadbolts."
"Sarah, you can’t go out there in this weather!" my mother cried, grabbing my sleeve. "Wait for state troopers!"
"State troopers will take forty minutes to get up this mountain ridge, Mom. Rachel died trying to get this out. I’m not letting him burn the truth."
I grabbed Dad’s heavy raincoat from the hall tree, snatched the Maglite from my mother’s hand, and slipped out the back door into the black, rain-soaked night.
Rachel and Marcus’s property sat on a four-acre wooded lot just half a mile through the pine ridge behind my mother’s house. The trail was slick with wet needles and red clay mud. The wind whipped through the towering hemlocks, howling like an animal as I scrambled uphill, my boots sliding in the muck.
Up ahead, through the dense screen of pines, a flicker of orange light danced across the wet leaves.
Smoke.
The acrid smell of burning gasoline hit my nostrils before I even cleared the tree line.
I reached the clearing. The old cedar tool shed behind their house was already engulfed in heavy black smoke, orange flames licking at the window frames. And there, standing in the downpour with a red plastic jerrycan in his hand, was Marcus.
He had a crowbar jammed into the floorboards near the threshold, tearing up the planks in a frenzy while the fire spread behind him.
"Marcus!" I screamed over the roar of the wind.
May you like
He whipped around, the crowbar raised high, his face smeared with soot, rain, and blood.
"You should’ve stayed in the house, Sarah," he screamed, charging straight at me through the flames.
