Page 60 of Collateral Damage
And I just killed an animal because for half a second, I thought someone was coming for her.
I run a hand over my face, snow melting against my skin. My heart rate's finally starting to slow, but the adrenaline dump leaves me shaky.
I force myself to move away from the elk, to keep checking the tree line. My legs are heavy, like I'm wading through water instead of snow.
Numb, I scan the woods in sections, methodically, trying to fall back into the rhythm of proper procedure.
Nothing moves except the trees and the falling snow.
I complete the circuit in another ten minutes, though it feels longer. Every shadow makes my pulse jump. Every sound pulls my hand toward my weapon.
By the time I circle back to the cabin, my face feels like raw meat from the wind.
I pause at the porch steps, looking back one more time at the tree line. The elk's already disappearing under fresh snow. In an hour, there'll be nothing but a dark lump. By morning, it'll be buried completely.
Like it never happened.
I climb the steps and reach for the door handle, then stop. My hand hovers there for a moment.
She's going to ask what the shot was. She's going to see it in my face.
And I'm going to have to tell her why she can’t trust me anymore.
Fourteen
Ava
I do what he told me and stay put, my foot propped on a chair with a melting bag of ice numbing the damage. When thirty minutes pass, and I’ve exceeded the recommended icing window, there’s no therapeutic gain in staying in here.
I limp back into the living room carrying an elastic bandage from my medical bag, when the air in the cabin suddenly snaps.
It isn't the timber-straining groan of the wind or the random snap of ice shedding from the pines. It’s too flat, too final. The bandage slips from my fingers, unraveling on the floorboards. I stop breathing. My entire nervous system tunes to the storm's frequency, straining to parse the silence that follows.
Nothing.
My pulse is a frantic, erratic drumming in my throat, vibrating against my jaw. That was a gunshot.
I drag myself across the room, my bad foot trailing like dead weight. Every movement sends a fresh jolt, but the dread is stronger. My palms hit the glass—cold enough to sear—and I press my face to the pane, searching the gray, churning chaos of the yard.
I lean into the freezing glass, my breath ghosting over the pane until the whiteout clears. A dark silhouette cuts through the swirling drift. It moves with a rhythmic, measured cadence—a predator’s gait, steady and unhurried.
He halts, a shadow swallowed by the storm. For a heartbeat, he’s gone, then he emerges again—the same lethal stride, the same way he holds his shoulders like he’s bracing against the weight of the world.
My stomach drops into a hollow pit. He doesn’t look like he’s fighting the wind; he’s part of it. He pauses, his head snapping toward the cabin as though he sees me.
I stop breathing. I press my palms harder against the glass, knuckles throbbing, certain any second the latch will give and the nightmare will be standing in the room. He reaches toward his hip, a slow, deliberate motion that freezes the blood in my veins. My mind searches for a hiding spot, anything, because there’s no mistaking that silhouette.
He’s here. He’s found me.
I barely register the agony in my ankle as I scramble back, looking for the gun I’m going to have to use. My breath comes in ragged hitches, fogging the glass and turning the figure into a hulking wraith. He’s at the porch. He’s going to kick the door in. My vision narrows, the world shrinking to the sound of my heartbeat.
The silhouette steps into the faint orange spill of the porch light. He isn’t reaching for a weapon—he’s reaching for the door handle. A heavy metal-on-metal clack vibrates through the floorboards.
I’m paralyzed, my hand hovering over the cold steel of the gun, my finger trembling on the safety. This is it. I brace for the door to splinter, for the barrel of a rifle to force its way through, for the end of everything I’ve been running from.
The first knock makes me jump.
Then another comes. Followed by two. Then a pause. And a one-two.
