Beneath Blackwater River Leslie Wolfe (me reader txt) 📖

Another blast of wind caught the breath in her lungs. She renewed her grip against the branch while her arms and legs trembled from exertion, pushed beyond their limits by her desperate will to survive. She’d do anything to live, to go back to Oregon and hug her mom again. Then, she’d go straight to the cops and tell them about that house and the man who’d killed so many other girls before her.

A buzzard circled above her head, flapping and gliding with powerful wings. She felt the air moving against her face before she saw it approaching, extending its claws and getting ready to grab on to a tree branch.

“No, no,” she cried, too afraid to let go and wave her arm to scare the bird away.

It landed on the branch above her head, his added weight making the cypress waver and creak.

“Aah,” she cried, holding on to the branch, desperately trying to stay level until it stabilized. Until the tree stopped moving, she didn’t breathe, but then the smell of the bird filled her nostrils with the promise of death.

The bird poked through the cypress needles and pierced her shoulder. She yelped, the sharp pain fueling her anger.

“Not yet,” she shouted, “I’m not dead yet!” Then she screamed, hoping the sound of her voice would make it fly away and yet fearing the moment when its liftoff would rattle the cypress again. Then her mind veered, losing grip with reality. She imagined herself telling the story of her ordeal to her friends back home, on the streets of Creswell, Oregon. They’d laugh and tell her she’d gone insane, refusing to believe a word of it. They’d say, “Girl, what the heck have you been smokin’? Some bad crack or something? Shit like that don’t happen to people!”

She laughed out loud, her voice sending strange echoes against the rocky walls of the ravine.

She was going crazy. And soon, she’d have to let go. She couldn’t take it anymore.

In the abyss opening beneath her weary body, two coyotes growled and yelped, fighting fiercely over a bone.

51Hideout

Scott hadn’t expected it, but Triple-Dollar-Sign had come through for him.

He’d rung him after he fled the fishing cabin, even though it was almost midnight, and the man had methodically torn him a new one, not hesitating to call him out on his incompetence, on his inability to stop that nosy fed-turned-detective cold in her tracks. Dead cold.

Little did he know, Scott’s concerns were nowhere near that fed bitch, although he would’ve gladly twisted her neck like a twig, taking pleasure in hearing her bones crack while life left her body, watching it writhe, then twitch, then fall still. But no, his mind was on his hard-earned money.

What had possessed him to tell Nicole about his stash all those years ago? A serious amount of alcohol, if he remembered correctly, but he’d always taken pride in his ability to hold his liquor and his mouth shut when drunk. Now the woman was probably spilling her guts to the cops, sending them on their way to clear out every dime he’d squirreled away after twenty years of hard work.

One day soon, he’d catch up with her and make her pay for it, for all of it. If he regretted anything, it was he hadn’t killed her before leaving that cabin, so that mouth of hers would finally stop yapping.

He’d run out of there cutting through the woods and looking over his shoulder, expecting to see Young and the rest of the precinct catching up with him, but he’d made it away without seeing anyone. He’d found his car and rushed behind the wheel, then peeled off throwing dirt and pebbles in the air, skidding badly on the muddy, leaf-covered ground.

As soon as he hit the highway, he’d called Triple-Dollar-Sign. He had nowhere to go, and didn’t want to leave the area while so many loose ends were left hanging in the air like an old woman’s oversized underwear on laundry day.

He could’ve run to the terminal and tried to salvage his money, but he was too afraid he’d be caught. Maybe the cops were already staking out the place. Could he withstand his entire precinct gathered around him, weapons drawn, and make it out alive? No chance, although he would’ve enjoyed kicking some of their traitorous faces in. Who’d told the fed about his cabin, if not one of them, one of the men he thought of as his brothers and had invited over for a weekend of beers and fishing?

His only hope remained with Nicole, out of all people. Maybe she’d be smart enough to keep her big trap shut, in the hope she could get her paws on that money herself. Maybe she wouldn’t think about it; after all, fourteen years had passed since he’d last mentioned it, his drunken indiscretion never again repeated.

But for now, he had to lay low, and Triple-Dollar-Sign had just the place for it.

With a searing voice slathered in contempt, he’d instructed him to head north and take the third to last exit before hitting the Oregon state line, then drive on a side road due west for about 2 miles. Then he’d find an abandoned farmhouse at the end of a long driveway, on the left side of the road.

The man’s instructions had landed him there without issues, but he hadn’t stopped with the directions, guiding him to access the fuse box in the garage and flip a few switches that had Scott frowning in the weak glow of his flashlight. Someone had improvised some twisted circuitry in that fuse box, bypassing certain fuses but centralizing the rest onto a switch fitted with a remote emitter. Why on earth would anyone do that?

But rich people were different from folks like him, and they got to do whatever they wanted, because they could afford it. Like keep that farmhouse like that, in complete darkness, unheated in the brisk November cold, smelling of musty air and mold,