Free Darker Still by T. S. Worthington Page B

know if it will bring back anything yet, but we will just keep our fingers crossed in the meantime. No one breathe a word of this to the cops. I’ll tell the others.”
    Chief Michaels went around the unit whispering in ears trying to keep things on the down low and away from the prying eyes of the media vultures that were buzzing and circulating around their heads.
    He hoped the bastard was watching and that he was enjoying his last few nights of freedom.
    *
    Holly Janson slammed her car door shut and started walking down the street. This was the fourth time that damn car had left her stranded in the middle of nowhere since her asshole step father had given it to her for her eighteenth birthday. It was supposed to be a reliable car that would get her to and from college in Marietta every day. So far it had forced her to walk more often than not. And today of all times it had happened in the dead zone between the two towns where the cell phone signal was very touchy on a good day. She was getting no bars at all. Her phone was useless right now.
    There was hardly any traffic this late at night out this way, not that she would have hitchhiked anyway. With the murders that had happened so close together, there was no telling what kind of psycho might be behind the wheel of any one of the cars that might happen by. She would take her chances with the dark, thank you very much.
    She kept looking at her phone as she walked hoping that she would hit a sweet spot and get some signal so she could call triple A. But as of yet she was not getting anything.
    She hated the summer semester at school. The classes were always so long and grueling. Four hours three times a week for most of them because they had to cram in ten weeks what a normal semester did in sixteen. But some of the classes she needed for her major were only offered at this time. It was pathetic and it had angered her severely. They liked to split the summer sessions up into two sessions, so they could pump more money out of you. And it made things so much harder than they needed to be. How anyone retained any information from their summer classes was beyond her; it couldn’t be done.
    But she only had to complete about six more classes in the fall to be finished with her degree. Then who knows what life would throw at her. She still wasn’t sure what she wanted to be when she grew up. Even after four years of college it was all still pretty much touch and go. It was a tough decision to wonder what you were going to do with your life for the next forty years.
    She heard something behind her.
    It sounded like a branch cracking beneath a footstep. She spun around and peered into the darkness. There was not much to see. She turned on the flash light on her phone which offered just a minor glimpse into the darkness that surrounded her, but still did not provide her nearly enough light to see if someone was really there or not.
    She held her breath to quiet the sound of her breathing so that the silence was now deafening in her ears. She heard nothing. There was no one there.
    She turned around and started walking again, this time faster trying to check her signal furiously. Oh, why wouldn’t she get a signal? Was it too much to ask for to just have a small little break once in a while?
    The sound again.
    She spun around so fast that she almost lost her balance. Every sound around her was being amplified right now and she didn’t know what sound was what. It all sounded normal and it all sounded suspicious, but her breathing was drowning it all out. She tried to stop her breathing, but her gasps came in quick succession roaring in her head.
    She knew that someone had to be there. She was going to be murdered right then and there. She was sure of it. It was just a gut instinct that she had. There had never come a time when she was as frightened as she was right at that moment. Every bead of sweat rolling off her body felt like a dagger digging into her flesh and every thump