Chapter 4 - The Mud and the Wolves
The smell of battery acid and scorching oil filled my nose before the pain even registered.
Everything was upside down. The gray roof fabric of our crushed Honda Civic was pressing against the top of my head, soaked with cold, muddy rainwater that trickled through the shattered sunroof. My legs were pinned beneath the collapsed glove box. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass, sending hot, pulsing needles across my ribs.
"Mom..."
My voice sounded small, like a mouse drowning in a drainpipe.
Beside me, suspended by the tension of her locked seatbelt, Mara hung limp. Her pale arms dangled toward the inverted ceiling, her fingers twitching slightly against the broken safety glass. A dark, thick stream of blood oozed from her hairline, running across her forehead and dripping into her closed left eyelid.
"Mom, please wake up. They're coming down the hill."
She didn't move. Her chest barely rose. A wet, rattling sound came from her throat with every shallow gasp of air.
Up on Blackwood Ridge, two car doors slammed shut in rapid succession. The heavy thud-thud cut straight through the roar of the rain pounding against the exposed undercarriage of our wrecked car.
"Check the tree line!" a man's voice barked from above. It was deep, harsh, and completely devoid of panic—the voice of someone doing a routine chore, like taking out the trash. "The frame caught on the pines fifty feet down! Bring the flashlights!"
Two powerful beams of white halogen light pierced through the wet canopy of spruce and pine trees. The bright cones danced across the torn branches, illuminating the white steam hissing from our cracked radiator.
My heart felt like a trapped bird beating against my ribs. Dad’s voice echoed in my head, sharp and clear, cutting through four years of grief: “If you ever find yourself cornered in the woods, June-bug, you don't play dead. You find water, you get small, and you never make a sound.”
I reached up with trembling, bloody fingers and found the red release button of my seatbelt. I pushed with both thumbs.
Click.
My body dropped hard onto the inverted roof, my knees banging painfully against the fractured dashboard. The pain made my vision swim with black spots, but I bit my bottom lip so hard the taste of copper filled my mouth. I didn't scream. I couldn't.
"Mom," I whispered, reaching over to touch her cold cheek. "I have to get you out."
I clawed at her seatbelt buckle. The metal mechanism was jammed tight, warped by the violent impact that had crushed the B-pillar into her shoulder. I yanked, kicked, and pulled until my fingernails cracked and bled, but the latch wouldn't budge.
"Vance, down here!" a voice shouted from just thirty yards up the muddy slope. Heavy combat boots were sliding down the slick embankment, snapping dry twigs and dislodging rocks that clattered against our crumpled trunk. "I see the license plate! It's wedged between two boulders above the ravine!"
"Make sure the girl is inside," a second voice replied from further up. "Grant said if that ring leaves this mountain, both of our heads are on the chopping block. Check their pulses and finish it."
Finish it.
They weren't here to rescue us. They were here to make sure we never crawled out of the ditch alive.
Mara’s eyes suddenly fluttered open. Her pupils were dilated, unfocused, glassy with shock. Her fingers weakly scraped against my forearm, leaving streaks of red on my skin.
"June..." she wheezed, her voice barely louder than the patter of raindrops on the tin metal.
"Mom, I can't unlock your belt!" Tears finally spilled over my cheeks, hot against the freezing rain. "I can't get you out!"
With a terrifying surge of desperate strength, Mara reached up and grabbed the collar of my dress. She pulled me down until her lips were pressed against my ear. Her breath smelled of iron and rain.
"Listen to me," she gasped, her fingernails digging deep into my neck. "Run. You have to run."
"No! I'm not leaving you!"
"You take the ring... and you run down to the river," she ordered, her voice trembling with a ferocious authority that brooked no argument. "Follow the water east. Two miles down... Old Miller's Mill. Ask for Silas. Tell him... tell him Julian’s daughter is alive."
"Mom—"
"Take the chain off! Hide it in your shoe!" She choked on a cough, blood flecking her lips. "If Grant gets that ring, he wins. He killed your father for it, June. He staged the crash. He's been hunting us since the day you were born. Don't let him win."
A flashlight beam suddenly washed over the shattered rear windshield, illuminating the interior of the cabin in blinding, sterile white.
"Hey! Someone's moving in there!"
Mara slammed her palm against my shoulder, shoving me toward the open, jagged hole where the passenger door had been ripped away by a boulder.
"GO!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "RUN, JUNE!"
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I pulled the silver chain over my head, shoved the heavy gold band deep into my soaked sneaker beneath my arch, and scrambled on my hands and knees through the broken glass into the mud.
"Stop! Halt!"
