The Night Killer

grimaced at how that sounded.
    “Skeleton? Where?” he said.
    She pointed behind her without taking her eyes off the man.
    “You must of hit your head. I don’t see no skeleton.” He grinned at her.

Chapter 2
    Diane’s heart beat loud in her ears as she eased back toward the open door. Before she could scramble in, the man grabbed at her, his grip landing on her wet forearm. She jerked away and his wet grasp slipped, scraping her arm with his nails. Diane didn’t hesitate—she struck out and hit the end of his nose with the palm of her hand. He yelled and stepped back, hands to his face. Diane ran at him, grabbing his flashlight from his loosened grasp as she brushed past him.
    Unfortunately he now blocked the entry to her SUV. Not that getting in her vehicle was a good plan. If she couldn’t get the SUV moving, she would be screwed. Diane ran down the muddy road, hoping to avoid anything in the darkness that would twist her ankle. She couldn’t afford to fall. She couldn’t afford a sprain.
    Diane heard the man yelling, but through the noise of the rain, she made out only the word dogs . There was more than one person, and he was telling them to get the dogs. She cut quickly into the woods. The road would be easier to negotiate, but it would also leave her out in the open. When she was hidden by the foliage, Diane stopped for a moment to catch her breath and listen. At first she heard only her heart and the rain. Gradually she became aware, through the sound of the downpour, of dogs barking.
    Diane had heard a K-9 officer speak to the Rosewood PD about dogs and their ability to track a scent. She came away with the idea that a dog’s nose was so far superior to the human nose that it was almost not analogous to the human ability to smell. And that if a well-trained dog and a good handler were on your trail, you were caught. And worse, a well-trained dog could track in the rain. Though in this downpour and on these mountainsides, she suspected the scent would be displaced quite a bit, maybe even washed away. Diane wondered if the dogs she heard were tracking dogs, or perhaps, more likely, hunting dogs. Or maybe they were fighting dogs. She had heard that some people in this county, though it was illegal, trained fighting dogs.
    Diane wiped the rain out of her eyes.
    Damn—how did I get in this predicament?
    She started at a walk, as quickly as she dared, away from the derelict house. There was no running in dark woods. The only light she had was a flashlight running low on battery power. And flashes of lightning. No, she also had her cell phone on her belt. Though she didn’t get any service here, the display had a light that could help a little in pitch-black.
    A flash of lightning illuminated the area around her for a moment. It was like a snapshot, and she committed it to memory. Diane was afraid to use the flashlight so close to the house, for fear it would be seen. She continued parallel to the road. Vines and undergrowth slapped her face and scratched her arms.
    If she could find her way back to the Barres’, she would be safe. But she had been barely able to find her way to their home by road. She had no idea of the way through the woods. They had asked her to stay the night and leave in the morning. She wished she’d taken them up on their kind offer. Now here she was in the forest in a downpour with little light, chased by some maniac, and about to be chased by dogs.
    Diane tried to ignore the rain, her soggy clothes, and the sick fear churning in the pit of her stomach as she trudged through the underbrush. She was stopped by a thicket as impenetrable as a wall. She was too wary to go out into the open roadway. Her only other choice was to go deeper into the woods and work her way around the thicket. The ground sloped downward, away from the thicket, and the forest litter was slick. She almost fell, startled by the sound of a loud muffler—a vehicle on the road. There was enough of the roadway visible through the thick underbrush for her to see a pickup driving slowly by. She heard barking and thought she saw dogs in the back of the truck. She ducked and lay almost flat on the ground, covering her face with the sleeve of her shirt, just as a shaft of light swept through the openings in the foliage.
    Diane watched the taillights as the truck slowly moved down the muddy road. The wind was blowing in her direction, blowing her scent away from the dogs. She was grateful. And she was thankful