Sleep Tight by J. H. Markert & Andi Arndt & Dreamscape Media

Author:J. H. Markert & Andi Arndt & Dreamscape Media
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

31

TESS HURTLED THROUGH the woods, dodging trees, jumping over brambles and thickets of deadfall, following, looking, desperately trying to find signs to where Justin had gone, unarmed, chasing after an officer of the law now wanted by the law.

Maybe Danny was right, and this did come back to her. But why? She’d been a teenage girl when Jeff Pritchard was arrested.

You know why, Tess.

Deep down she did, yes. She’d told Justin she’d been inside her father’s car when they’d arrested Father Silence, but she hadn’t told him she’d been inside that house … but it was too fuzzy, why and how she’d gotten in.

A shot fired, echoed close.

Birds scattered from wide, gnarled boughs.

“Justin,” she screamed.

Another shot.

She crept onward, her finger on the trigger of her 9 mm. Sirens approached from the east, louder as they sped toward the asylum.

She heard footsteps.

She ducked behind a tree, glanced toward the source. Twenty yards away, Justin stumbled, limping toward her, using the trees for balance.

Thank God.

She ran to him. He draped his arm over her shoulder, using her like a crutch. She took his weight as he favored his bent right leg.

“Are you hit?”

“Not with a bullet,” he said, wincing as he limped. “I was gaining, and then out of nowhere, another one jumped out from behind a tree and hit me with a pipe. He was wearing a bull mask.” Justin leaned on her for support. “Sheep Mask stopped running after I was down. He fired at me but missed. Twice. They took off running when they heard the sirens.”

Justin’s limp eased, like he was walking off a sports injury, and by the time they navigated the wooded hillside toward the clearing, he was walking on his own power.

“Foster Bergman is missing,” she said. “Janks took him.”

Four Twisted Tree police cars skidded to a halt atop the hill, lights flashing. Doors flew open and the warden pointed down the hillside toward Tess and the woods. Half of the men hurried toward Goat Mask lying dead in the grass, the rest toward Tess and Justin.

But Tess had already ducked back into the tree line, following a hunch. Near where Janks had been hiding behind the tree earlier, she saw a bucket with a long-handled brush propped on top. She ran to it. Dark red paint stained the bristles. She followed splotches of it from the leaves on the ground to the nearest tree trunk, and there they were, about five feet up from the ground, painted right onto the bark—a pair of red eyes.

As the Twisted Tree officers navigated the grassy downslope toward them, Tess turned away, followed where those eyes could have been staring.

“Detective Claiborne,” one of the officers shouted.

She ignored the voice.

She walked deeper into the woods and Justin followed.

“Tess, that wasn’t paint,” Justin shouted after her.

“I know.”

Twenty yards ahead she found another set of eyes, this pair on the bark of a tree facing north toward the river.

Stepping stones for something bigger …

She followed where those eyes were looking, and

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