The third time he poked her, she stole his lightning bolt and stuck it into the fluff on her chest. He said it looked so good on her, he’d let her keep it. He reclaimed it later that night, when they were both drunk. They talked for a while, and he kissed her.
The kiss was a surprise. She looked ridiculous in her costume, not at all sexy. She’d hidden her lack of breasts beneath the cloud, only exposed the full length of her legs—her best feature, she thought.
After two months with Jonah, when he told her he’d fallen in love with her, she started cutting her hair regularly. She wore fitted clothes that showed off her slender figure, a shape that had captured a smart, attractive law student.
But everything about her figure changed soon after. Only eight months into their relationship, her breasts swelled, and new curves emerged all over. By then, she was four months pregnant and had been married for a month. They took the oaths at a courthouse with only their best friends as witnesses. The senator and his wife had refused Jonah’s invitation.
Ellis put the comb in her backpack and climbed off the rock. She had to move to generate some heat. She climbed a bluff and looked down over the ravine. The trees were just beginning to leaf out. The chartreuse hue of early spring in the eastern forest brought to mind her Wild Wood. But she didn’t dwell there. Forever forward, she told herself.
She followed the trail back to camp but froze as she neared her tent. Her pulse skipped, then rushed with a suddenness that made her light-headed. There were two men in her camp. One was keeping watch as the other broke into her car.
The man keeping watch saw her at almost the same moment she saw him. She turned and ran, no time to contemplate if she should. She looked backward as she tore into the forest, sickened when she saw both men chasing her. Why would they chase her and not run away when she’d seen them trying to burglarize her car?
Maybe she shouldn’t have run. Maybe they thought she had something valuable in her backpack. A camera. Binoculars.
She did have binoculars, but they could have them. The backpack was slowing her down anyway. She pulled it off and let it fall behind her as she ran. She had her hunting knife on her, as always, but it was in its sheath, attached to the belt of her hiking pants. She took it out of its case and hid it in her pocket. But the sheath would give it away. She popped the snap on the case and let it fall.
Seconds later, one of the men grabbed her. His momentum knocked her facedown onto the ground, his body sprawling over hers. He moved off quickly, replacing his weight with his boot on the small of her back. The gesture said everything she feared. She was afraid she was going to vomit.
“Got her,” he said breathlessly.
“She’s fast,” the other man said, walking over.
Ellis had to stand. She appeared too vulnerable on the ground. She forced strength into her quivering body, rolled out from under the boot, and jumped to her feet. The men didn’t try to stop her.
She faced them. They were in their late twenties, both fairly big. The taller one, with a short, dark beard and brown eyes, had a beer gut. He was still breathing hard and holding her backpack. The other, the one who’d put his boot on her back, had a face prickly with a day or two of red-blond beard growth. He was fitter than the other man, and his blue-gray eyes made her stomach reel again. Something about how he looked at her. As if her capture excited him.
“Now, why were you running?” he asked, scratching his fingers in his cropped hair to feign puzzlement.
“You know why. I saw what you were doing.”
He grinned. “What was I doing?”
“Breaking into my car. Take it. Take everything. Even the car. The keys are in the backpack.”
“Take everything?” He cast a look at the other man.
She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t show her weakness. She pressed her arm against her side. The knife was still in her pocket.
“Let’s just go our own ways, okay?” she said. “I have no phone on me. I can’t call the police.” She half turned to walk away. “I’ll go. Take the car.”
The strawberry blond grabbed her arm.
She shrugged him off. Again, only because he allowed it. “Come on. Just let me go,” she said.
“I can’t let a woman go off alone into the woods,” he said. “That wouldn’t be right. You should know it’s not safe to be in a place like this all alone.”
It was worse than she thought. She forced a show of confidence through her dizzying terror.
“I’m not alone,” she said. “I’m a biologist doing research here, and some of my colleagues are meeting me soon. You should go before they arrive.”
“Uh-oh, her colleagues are coming,” he said to his friend.
The bearded man grinned.
“I think you’re lying to me,” the blond told Ellis. “Why would a biologist be sleeping all alone in the cold woods?”
“Biologists who study forest species sleep in the woods in all seasons.”
“What species do you study?”
“Hickory trees,” she said, because there was one just behind him.
“What about them do you study?”
She tried to give him a look that didn’t betray the quaking mess she was inside. “I’ve had enough of this,” she said as boldly as she could. She moved to walk around him, but he blocked her with his body.
“I said I wanted to hear more about the hickory trees,” he said. “Biology always was my favorite subject.”
His friend snickered, and when the blond looked at him and grinned, Ellis slid her hand into her pocket. She felt the handle of the knife.
The blond rubbed his hand down the front of his jeans. “I got a damn hickory tree
