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Three more tours and Sasha would be home free.

The end-of-season quiet was creeping in, settling over
the dense pine and fir she called her office.

Soon, the last of the tourists would pack up their
brand-new, barely used gear and go home. She wasn't sure what she was going to
do once she was no longer shepherding clueless Midwesterners or influencers so
determined to get the perfect selfie they seemed intent on falling off a cliff.

The solitude was what she craved, what had drawn her to
this life, but it also brought a familiar, low-humming anxiety. Too much quiet
gave her too much time to think.

She definitely wasn't hiding in the gear shed. 

That would be cowardice, and Sasha Forde was no coward.
She was merely taking a meticulous inventory of the equipment, her calloused
hands moving with confidence over climbing ropes and carabiners. She hoped Erik
would be gone by the time she finished.

They said not to date your coworkers.

That was true enough. It was even worse when that
coworker you dated became an ex, especially in a place this remote. She wasn't
sure what she had been thinking—a momentary lapse in judgment fueled by a
shared bottle of whiskey and a lonely summer night. 

Now it was clear: this tour company wasn't big enough for
the both of them.

The heavy canvas flap of the shed’s entrance rustled and
slapped against its frame behind her. Sasha winced at the crunch of approaching
footsteps on the gravel path. There was only one other person here today.

Erik Daniel. The ex.

Great.

"Hey, Sash, how you doing?" Erik asked. His
voice was laced with a casual charm she now found grating, as if they hadn't
both been studiously avoiding each other ever since she’d found him sneaking
into Caroline's tent at midnight two weeks ago.

Sasha didn't turn from the wall of neatly coiled ropes.
"Did you need something?"

"I know some of the stuff is heavy back here, babe.
I thought you could use some help."

"Don't call me babe." It landed like a stone in
the quiet shed. She hadn't liked it when they were dating; she liked it even
less now. 

"Come on, Sash. No need to be a hard ass." He
stepped inside, letting the flap fall closed and plunging the shed into dusty,
shadowed light. The air suddenly felt thick, too close. "I thought we were
just having some fun. We were good together. We could still be good
together."

"Erik, stop." She clutched a thick bundle of
rope, holding it between them like a force field, a boundary he couldn't cross.
"It's over. We're done. We don't need to do this, okay?"

"Why do you take everything so seriously?" he
demanded, his tone shifting from wheedling to sharp. The friendly façade
cracked, revealing sour resentment beneath.

And right then, Sasha remembered that they were alone,
miles from civilization, and her cell phone's reception was spotty at best. Her
heart gave a hard, sudden thump in her ribs.

Shit.

"I just want to get things ready for the tour,"
she said, her voice impressively steady. "Everybody's coming in a couple
of days. It's fine."

Erik took another step towards her, his shadow swallowing
what little light filtered through the canvas. She hated herself for the
instinctual step back she took, the toe of her boot bumping against a stack of
sleeping bags. Going deeper into the gear shed only meant she was more trapped.

Since when did she think of Erik as the type to trap her?
She’d agreed to go out with him because he seemed nice, easygoing. Not this.

"You always think you're so much better than
everyone else," he sneered. "So I made one little mistake. Get over
it."

"How is Caroline?" Okay, that was bitchy, but
she was allowed. She was the one that got cheated on. 

Erik made a sound of disgust and turned on his heel, his
anger a force in the small space. He shoved the canvas flap aside and stalked
out of the shed, leaving Sasha alone with the silence.

Thank god. She let out a breath, the tension draining
from her shoulders. She really didn't want to deal with that anymore.

She got back to work, losing herself in the familiar
rhythm of preparation. She tried to forget Erik was still around somewhere. He
was infuriatingly decent at his job, almost as good of a guide as she was.

She wouldn't hate being on a tour led by him in other
circumstances. He knew these woods well, and he had that infectious sense of
adventure that made people come back year after year. 

He even got better reviews than she did—a fact that
galled her more than she cared to admit.

She was packing up her personal gear for the day, the
late afternoon sun slanting through the trees, when she heard voices. A prickle
of unease traced up her spine. She shouldn't have heard voices. Erik might be
on a call, but, again, spotty reception. None of the rest of the team should be
there. They were all on a multi-day hike far to the south and weren't due back
for another two days.

Unless something went very wrong.

A lifetime of caution, of learning to listen to the
subtle warnings the world gave her, made her move slowly. Something was off.

Erik wasn't in the main camp or in the small gravel
parking lot. His beat-up sedan was there, right next to her van, and there were
no other vehicles.

So far not weird. So where was he? And why did she hear
voices? Had she finally cracked from the isolation?

Hopefully not. Hearing voices in the woods was a totally
normal thing, she told herself, a trick of the wind through the pines. But
hearing them get louder and more distinct as she stepped farther down one of
the lesser-used trails meant that they were real and definitely not a figment
of her imagination.

"I can show you wherever you need to go," Erik
was saying, his voice carrying clearly in the still air. "There's no one
who knows these woods better than me."

That was debatable. She knew them just as well, if not
better. But she wasn't going to interrupt this strange meeting to say so. 

"Are you sure?" another unfamiliar voice asked.
He had a strange, clipped accent, one she didn’t recognize. In her line of
work, she’d heard them all and had a pretty good ear for placement. This was
different. Foreign, but not from any place she could name.

Sasha moved with stealth, her boots silent on the
pine-needle-cushioned earth. She peered through the dense screen of greenery
and saw Erik standing in a small, secluded clearing. He was surrounded by three
men, all of them exceptionally tall and broad-shouldered.

They were dressed in dark, functional clothing that
looked more tactical than civilian. Their posture was rigid, their presence
radiating a quiet menace that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. One of
them handed over a thick envelope. Erik took it, a greedy little smile playing
on his lips as he weighed it in his hands.

Drug money? She didn't think Erik had that kind of
sideline. Trail guides weren't paid well. Some weed on the side was one thing,
but that fat stack was way more than a little weed. What was he into? Meth?
Pills?

Her mind raced. Should she say something? Should she call
the cops? Her phone was useless out there. She had no signal. Should she run
away and pretend she didn't see any of this?

Yeah, that one. That was probably the best option.

Sasha took a careful step back, and her boot heel came
down squarely on top of the only dry, brittle leaf in a three-mile radius. It
cracked with a sound that seemed to echo like a gunshot in the suddenly silent
clearing. She bit her lip hard to keep from cursing, her body tensing to stone.

She risked a glance back at Erik and his shady friends.
Her blood ran cold. One of the tall strangers was looking right at her, his
head tilted. His eyes, even from that distance, seemed to bore through the
foliage, pinning her in place. They were an impossible, bright yellow, and for
a terrifying second, she thought she saw them glow with an internal fire.

Oh, hell no.

He tilted his head. "Who is that?" he asked,
his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

She wasn't going to stick around for introductions. She
pivoted and ran, her survival instincts screaming. She heard Erik shout
something after her, his voice tight with panic, but she couldn't make out the
words.

Something scorched the air behind her, searing her back
in a wave of intense heat.

Fire? Did they have flamethrowers?

What kind of drug dealers were they?

She didn't waste time looking back. She pumped her arms
and ran like her life depended on it, because she knew with chilling certainty
that it did. The forest floor, familiar beneath her boots, flew by in a blur of
green and brown. Her lungs burned, her heart hammered in her ribs, but fear was
a fuel more potent than oxygen.

She risked a single, fleeting glance over her shoulder,
and what she saw made her stumble. A ribbon of flame was snaking through the
woods behind her. It didn't spread or burn like a normal fire. It moved with a
terrifying, liquid grace, like some sort of living entity that danced between
the trees, incinerating ferns and vaporizing moss.

It had a mind of its own.

And it was coming for her.