MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER HAD BEEN FEEDING SOMEONE THROUGH A HOLE IN HER BEDROOM WALL FOR WEEKS. WHEN I FINALLY PULLED THE PANEL OPEN, A LITTLE GIRL LOOKED STRAIGHT AT ME AND WHISPERED, “DADDY.”

The culvert emptied out into a rocky ditch choked with brambles and rotting autumn leaves.

The night air was freezing, biting into our faces like needles. A freezing November rain had begun to fall, turning the slope of the ravine into a slick, treacherous slide of mud.

I tumbled out of the pipe, catching myself on the wet rocks, my hands numb and bleeding from the sharp corrugated steel. Arthur was already helping Emily and the girls scramble up the steep embankment beneath the canopy of towering hemlocks.

Down below in the valley, through the skeletal branches of the leafless trees, our house stood brightly lit against the dark sky. The headlights of two black Chevy Suburbans were sweeping across our front lawn, their high beams cutting through the rain.

“They’ll find the culvert exit in less than ten minutes,” Arthur wheezed, his chest heaving as he pulled himself up by a birch sapling. “The mud holds our tracks like wet plaster.”

“How far is the truck?” I asked, scooping Lily up into my arms. She was shivering violently, her teeth chattering against my shoulder, but she remained silent, keeping her promise.

“Half a mile along the ridgeline,” Arthur gasped. “An old logging road.”

We pushed through the dense underbrush in total darkness. We couldn't risk using the flashlight now; any beam of white light against the ridge would be visible to the men scouring the valley floor. We moved by touch alone, branches whipping against our faces, boots sinking ankle-deep into the freezing slush.

Maya clung to Arthur’s back, her arms locked around his neck. Every few steps, she would glance back at me through the rain, her pale face ghost-like in the gloom. It struck me then, with an ache that cut deeper than the cold, how much she moved like Lily. The same stubborn tilt of the chin, the same defensive curl of the shoulders.

They were cousins. Blood of my blood. And until this morning, I hadn't even known she existed.

We reached the logging road twenty minutes later. Tucked beneath an overhang of dense spruce boughs was a battered, primer-gray 1998 Ford F-250.

Arthur fumbled with a set of keys, his fingers shaking so badly he dropped them twice into the pine needles before finally unlocking the driver’s side door.

We piled inside. Emily, Lily, and Maya squeezed into the wide vinyl bench seat in the rear of the extended cab, while I climbed into the passenger seat up front. The cab smelled of old coffee, diesel, and damp sawdust.

Arthur turned the key.

The starter chattered—*chug-chug-chug-chug*—a sickening, hollow sound that made my chest tighten into a fist.

“Come on, girl,” Arthur muttered, pumping the gas pedal. “Come on...”

The engine coughed, sputtered, and finally roared to life with an uneven, guttural rumble. Arthur slammed the gear shifter into reverse, backing out of the brush without turning on the headlights.

He navigated the rutted dirt track using only the faint ambient glow of the clouds reflecting the distant highway lights. Only when we crossed the county line into the deep forest of the Adirondacks did he finally flick on the low beams.

The two-hour drive north was spent in suffocating silence.

Emily sat in the back with an arm around each little girl. Lily had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, her head resting on Emily’s lap. Maya, however, remained wide awake, staring out the rain-streaked window at the endless wall of black pine trees.

“Arthur,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the winding two-lane blacktop. “Where is Leo right now?”

Arthur kept his hands locked at ten and two on the steering wheel. “When he ditched his truck at Lake George, he set a delayed distress beacon to draw Sterling’s trackers toward the Vermont border. He’s traveling on foot through the state forest. The plan was for him to circle back to my cabin in High Pines by midnight tonight.”

“And if he was caught?” Emily asked from the backseat, her voice trembling.

“If Leo was caught,” Arthur said, his voice flat and steady, “he’s dead. And Sterling won't stop until he tracks this truck to the end of the line.”

At quarter past midnight, Arthur turned off the county highway onto an unmarked gravel driveway that wound deep into a dense stand of white pines. At the end of the track sat a low-slung, rustic log cabin with fieldstone chimneys and a wide timber porch.

There were no lights on inside. The cabin was pitch-black, silent, and surrounded by an ocean of wilderness.

Arthur killed the engine. The truck ticked softly as it cooled down in the freezing rain.

“Stay in the truck,” I said, reaching down and pulling the iron crowbar from the floorboard. “I’m checking the perimeter first.”

“Ryan, wait—” Emily started, reaching for my shoulder.

“Stay here, Emily. Lock the doors behind me.”

I stepped out into the icy drizzle, the crowbar heavy in my right hand. The forest was dead quiet, save for the patter of rain against the needle-covered ground.

I moved up the wooden steps of the porch, keeping my back to the log wall. The front door was slightly ajar—barely two inches, the brass latch resting against the jamb without catching.

My pulse surged.

I kicked the door open with my boot, raising the crowbar high, stepping into the pitch-black living room.

From the dark corner beside the stone hearth, a sudden, violent blur of movement lunged at me.

A heavy shoulder slammed into my ribs, driving the air from my lungs and knocking me backward against the floorboards. The crowbar flew from my grip, clattering across the hearthstones.

A pair of hands grabbed my collar, pinning me down with brutal, desperate force. A cold blade pressed against the skin right beneath my jawline.

“Who sent you?” a voice hissed in the dark—a voice that sounded so horrifyingly like my own that the hairs on my arms stood on end. “Did Sterling send you?”

A flash of lightning through the cabin window illuminated the room for a single, brilliant second.

I looked up into the face pinned inches above mine.

It was my face.

The same hazel eyes. The same stubborn jawline. The same cleft in the chin. But his skin was weathered, marked by a deep scar running along his hairline, his eyes hollowed by weeks of grief and terror.

And on the left side of his neck, stark against his pale flesh, was the crescent birthmark.

“Leo?” I whispered, my voice breaking.