Hunted by Abir Mukherjee

Author:Abir Mukherjee [MUKHERJEE, ABIR]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

The light was fading; Shreya drove slowly, searching for any sign of Ghani or his blue Toyota, checking every driveway and every window behind which a lightbulb burned.

She drove on, out of town and uphill. Once more the trees closed in, walls of fir and cedar thinning occasionally to reveal a fence post or mailbox beside a weatherworn road.

Dan should have called back by now.

Cold sweat at her collar. She reached for the phone, pressed redial and waited as nothing happened. On-screen, the bars of reception had dwindled to nothing.

Damn.

The road twisted like a serpent’s tongue and ended in a fork; a forlorn crossroads at the end of the world. The Pipeline Road.

Left or right?

She chose left. Always left. The road rose and fell, an asphalt wave between darkening fields. She switched on the high beams against the dusk—a premature, preternatural darkness that seemed to weigh upon her the further she drove. There was nothing here. Just endless wilderness. The thought arose that maybe she should have chosen right. It irritated her.

Another mile of nothing made the decision for her. She braked, slowing and turning the wheel sharply till the car straddled the road. Only as she reversed did she see it, a single spot of light flickering in the forest, a yellow pinprick, dancing between the trees and no brighter than a star in the sky.

The headlight of a car, or a bike?

She squinted. If it was, it wasn’t moving.

She turned the car forward once more, heading on, searching for a road that might lead to that light, and ten minutes on she found it: an anonymous turn-off, half hidden among the trees. She forced the SUV down it, the chassis creaking its complaints as she crashed it through potholes. The light disappeared, lost amid the forest. The frustration rose once more, her skin growing itchy. She needed to find that light; needed to get to its source, whatever it might be. To stop—to lose it—was unconscionable. She had to keep going, and she did, carrying on for a mile further till abruptly, the road veered to the left and there it was shining through the branches, dead ahead and brighter than before. The sight of it mesmerized. She put her foot down, the gravel squelching against the tires. Ahead a building materialized out of the gray. A large, white clapboard house with darkened windows, two stories high and ringed by a narrow veranda. But it was the rusting blue pickup parked nearby that made her heart stop.

From where she sat, the license plate was illegible, obscured by dirt and the fading light, but the truck looked the right age.

Dan needed to know.

She reached for her phone, checked for a signal and found one precarious bar. She hit call. The bar flickered and died. On the line, nothing but silence.

Dammit.

She opened her door and stepped out into the punch of hard rain and crossed the dirt toward the vehicle. She pointed the flashlight on her phone at the license plate.

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