The Cabin in the Woods by Sarah Alderson

Author:Sarah Alderson [Alderson, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-05-10T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Present

I am lying awake in the cabin under a pile of blankets, feverish and unable to sleep. My head keeps spinning with thoughts about Ryan. I’m still trying to untangle years of lies. Every so often a memory will present itself and I’ll parse it for clues as to what I might have missed.

After a time I push all of it aside – I’ll never know the answers after all – and instead I start thinking of Sienna. The tinkling of the cans makes me startle and leap from the bed.

My first thought is that Gwen has figured out who I am and called the police and I rue my decision to stay put. I should have gone while I had the chance. If I get caught it will mean that everything I’ve done, all that I’ve gone through, will have been for nothing.

I hear the creak of the veranda at the front of the house. A footstep.

‘Run!’ the voice in my head screams at me.

It’s already too late, I think. But I can’t just let them take me. I stumble out into the hallway. Another creak outside sends adrenaline coursing through me. I dart through into the dark kitchen and slip my feet into my boots. Then, praying no one is on the other side, I yank open the back door and slip out into the frigid night.

I’m half-expecting to be met by a squad of armed cops, pointing guns, but there’s no one that I can see. Maybe the person at the front of the cabin is a lone bounty hunter, hired by the Reid family to hunt me down.

Expecting at any moment to hear someone yell at me to stop, or for a gun to crack and my ribs to explode with the force of a bullet, I stumble but keep running, my lungs burning from the effort, my feet clumsy in the snow. My breathing is so loud, my pulse beating so hard in my ears, that I don’t hear the growl until it’s too late. I skid to a halt three feet from a large animal – a giant cougar, I think – which is crouched in the snow, ready to pounce. It hisses at me.

‘Don’t turn around!’ a male voice sounds.

I jump, fighting the instinct to search out its owner.

‘Don’t turn your back,’ he yells.

I obey, fear twisting my stomach into a knot. The cougar is about seven feet long, its fur is sticking up on end, and it’s baring its teeth at me.

I feel the man suddenly at my back, and the barrel of a shotgun appears over my shoulder. I turn to look at him. It’s the man from the store. Not a cop then. And not a bounty hunter.

‘Get behind me,’ he says quietly but firmly and I do, slowly inching my way around him, not taking my eyes off the cougar, until he is between us.

‘Don’t shoot it,’ I hear myself say.

‘I hunted it this far,’ he says. ‘I’m not letting it go.

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