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The Dark Woods – Chapter One

	“Come on, bitch,” the man growled. He tugged on the heavy chain. “Pick up the pace.”
	Amy winced and whimpered behind the duct tape sealing her mouth. The chain was padlocked
around her neck and it hurt when he yanked on it. Picking up the pace was the very last
thing that she wanted to do. Every step they forced her to take took her further and
further away from any hope of rescue and closer to those menacing dark woods. Since she
had no hope of resisting, she obeyed as best she could. It wasn’t easy. She was dressed
exactly as she’d been when they took her from her bed back at the old motel, in panties
and an oversized black t-shirt. She was barefooted, so with every step she found yet
another twig or rock to bruise the tender soles of her feet. Her hands were cuffed behind
her, which made walking even more difficult. Her long, fine light brown hair hung loosely
to her shoulders, and the morning breezes kept blowing strands of it across her face. She
couldn’t brush them away, so she had to keep tossing her head so that she could see where
she was about to step. 
	She felt lightheaded and disoriented. The last thing that she could remember clearly was
flirting a bit with the big, bald, burly bartender back at the roadhouse while she tried
to pump him for information. All that had gotten her was a couple of free drinks, and she
was certain that he’d put a little something extra in the second one. She also felt a
little chilly and a lot worried. 
	There were three men with her, all large and bulky-looking in their elaborate
head-to-toe camouflage outfits. They also wore camouflage masks, which hid everything but
their eyes. Amy didn’t want to look at those eyes. She saw no mercy in them, only
interested speculation whenever they looked at her. The man in front was carrying a pump
shotgun. He kept scanning left to right and back again as he led the way across the
meadow. The next man in line was the one holding her leash. He carried a pistol in a
holster at his hip. The last man, bringing up the rear, carried a scoped rifle. She
couldn’t see him, but Amy was sure that he was also looking around as he followed along,
whenever he wasn’t focusing on her bare legs. She was certain that she could feel his eyes
on her every so often, but she didn’t dare turn around to make sure.
	She had no idea why they were all swathed in camouflage. She had no idea why they were
so well-armed. She also had no idea where she was, or how they had gotten her here. One
minute she was roused from her groggy sleep by rough hands covering her mouth, flipping
her over and cuffing her wrists, and the next she was being woken from another groggy
sleep, laying on an old tarp in the back of a battered pickup truck. She’d been so out of
it that she hadn’t even thought to look at the license plate until it was too late. All
she’d been able to note was that the truck had been parked in a little clearing at the end
of a rutted dirt road that disappeared into the surrounding woods. Then she was being led
along a narrow trail that ended where the woods ended at the edge of a wide meadow. They
were almost all the way across that meadow now and she’d seen no sign of any other people.
Once she’d thought she’d seen a house…or a building of some kind, anyway…in the distance,
but too far away for her to scream for help, even if she hadn’t been gagged with that
sticky strip of duct tape. It looked and felt like early morning. The sun was still low in
the sky, but climbing. From that she could at least tell that she was being led eastwards.
She could hear no birds, or indeed anything other than the heavy treads of her captors, a
muttered curse from the one leading her if she lagged too much to suit him, and her own
muffled whimpers of pain as her bare feet found yet another thing to bruise them hidden in
the ankle-high grass. She had only one consolation to cling to, and it was very small:
They wouldn’t be going to this much trouble if they meant to kill her. That still left
open the question of what they did mean to do with her. She could think of a number of
possibilities, and didn’t like any of them. She stepped on something hard and pointy and
whimpered. How much further were they going to make her walk? She was tired and thirsty
and the morning air was uncomfortably cool on her bare legs.
	She had plenty of reasons to worry. They’d probably tossed her motel room, which meant
that they’d found her ID and her gun. They had to know that she was a private
investigator. Would they torture her for information? If they did, she’d spill her guts
right away. This was supposed to be a simple, straightforward case. She wasn’t being paid
enough to play the hard-boiled PI, and she really didn’t know that much anyway. She
shuddered. They might just have fun torturing her anyway.
	She wondered if they’d gotten hold of the other woman PI she’d come across. They’d been
hired by different clients, but they both stood out in the small hill towns. If her
captors had found her, they almost certainly had found Corliss as well. Amy shook her
head, trying to clear it. All that the move did was shake more strands of hair across her
face. She hoped that they hadn’t bagged Corliss after all. Right now, that other PI seemed
to be her only hope of rescue.
	They were very close to the edge of the woods now, and the grass was getting taller.
Blades poked at her feet and brushed against her calves as she took one last desperate
look around. She could see old wheel ruts running along the edge of the woods and had a
sudden surge of hope. Was this a road? Was there some chance of a car or truck coming
along, some chance of a rescue?
	No…the ruts were there, but grass was growing as thickly in them as it was everywhere
else. Nobody had driven along this way for a long time. She wanted to cry.
	“Come on, bitch.” There was another rough yank on her chain. “We got a long ways to go
yet.” Amy groaned, a sound of mixed weariness and despair. The man holding the end of her
leash chuckled nastily and plodded on, drawing her along behind him as he moved
irresistibly into the dark woods. She felt a tear trickle down her cheek.