SNEAK PEEK of The First Hunt!

Prologue

Seattle, 1984

The boy eyed his father from the backseat of the Ford Fairmont as it turned off the Pacific Highway and pulled up to the curb of a dingy side street. He turned down the volume on his AC/DC cassette that played through the Walkman his dad had given him earlier this year for his ninth birthday. When a young woman with dark undereye circles and heavy makeup approached the passenger side of the car, he didn’t have to ask what they were doing here. Her fishnet tights and cut-off shorts were way too cold for the middle of winter in Seattle.

His dad rolled down the window. The woman leaned inside. She eyed the boy curiously in the back before speaking to the driver.

“Are you lookin’ to have some fun this afternoon?”

His father leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

She climbed inside without another word, and the Ford Fairmont pulled back onto the Pacific Highway.

She rubbed her hands together and held them in front of the heater. Her knuckles were red and cracked.

“I’m not used to being picked up with someone’s kid in the back,” she said. “And I’ve seen a lot of weird shi—” She looked back at the boy. “Stuff.”

The boy’s father didn’t respond.

She smiled at the boy through her bright red lipstick. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Sally.”

“Don’t talk to him,” his dad said from the driver’s seat.

Sally obeyed and turned back around. As they sped along the highway, the boy looked out the window at the cars in the adjacent lane. Families. Commuters. None of which, he guessed, had a hooker in the front seat.

The boy knew his dad had picked up women before. Before his mother died, he’d heard his parents arguing about it, although at the time, he’d been too young to understand what it meant.

Last year, his dad had picked up another hooker by the airport. They’d driven to a rundown motel, and his dad told the boy to wait in the car while he and the woman went into one of the rooms. The boy had fallen asleep, and when he’d woken, his dad had driven the woman back to the street where he’d picked her up.

Afterward, his dad had never spoken of it, and the boy had never asked.

They turned off the Pacific Highway onto a winding road lined with towering evergreens. By the time his dad finally pulled into an empty gravel parking area surrounded by green woods, they hadn’t passed a single car.

The boy pulled off his headphones, hearing the gravel crunch beneath the tires before the car came to a stop.

“Get out,” his dad said to Sally.

Sally glanced at the boy before opening her door. “What about your kid?”

“He’s fine,” his dad said, his expression stern. “Stay in the car. Me and her are gonna take a walk.”

He slammed the door and motioned for Sally to follow him. She gave the boy a sheepish look before following his dad into the woods.

The boy waited in the car for as long as he could until his curiosity got the better of him. With his Walkman in hand, he climbed over the front seat and slipped out, leaving the door ajar so that the wump of it closing wouldn’t alert his father of his disobedience.

When he reached the edge of the forest, he stopped, straining to hear what his father and the woman were doing. He took a few steps into the woods, wincing when a branch snapped under his foot. He paused before moving forward, heading in the direction he’d seen them go.

A woman’s scream pierced the silent wilderness. The boy stopped in his tracks. It was a different kind of scream than he’d ever heard before, high-pitched and keening, almost like an animal.

Sally appeared in the woods ahead of him, running. She was naked, her eyes wide with sheer terror. Branches cracked under her feet, and she sprinted toward him. The boy took a step back and stumbled onto the damp ferns.

When Sally met his gaze, the fear he saw there rooted him to the spot. Then out of the trees came his dad, too focused on Sally to notice his son in the distance. He gripped her arm and yanked with such force that she flew backward onto the ground. The boy gaped at the dirty, bloodied soles of her feet.

Frozen, he watched his father grab her by the hair. Sally shrieked and whimpered as he dragged her deeper into the underbrush, branches breaking under her naked body, until they were out of the boy’s sight.

The boy sat still, paralyzed with fear as he listened to Sally’s screams and pleading cries grow farther away. He heard his father grunt. Then there was nothing other than the rapid beating of his own heart. The silence was worse than Sally’s screams for mercy, even though he hoped it meant she was okay. But his gut told him there was only one reason Sally was no longer begging for her life.

The ground seemed to move beneath him. His father’s face, when he’d come out of the woods and pulled Sally off her feet, with his gritted teeth and distant fury in his eyes, was that of a stranger. Pure rage. Evil. He’d known his father to be a stern man, but nothing like that.

The boy covered his face with his hands. He should’ve helped her. But he’d been so afraid. And after seeing the look in his dad’s eyes, he knew there was no way he could’ve overpowered him. But it didn’t lessen his shame.

The sound of twigs snapping caused the boy to leap to his feet. He turned and ran for the car, tripping as the forest turned to gravel but catching himself before he fell. He didn’t dare turn back as he scrambled toward the faded blue car. He got in and closed the passenger door harder than he intended.

The boy slumped into the backseat and tried to catch his breath as his dad emerged from the trees—alone. He crossed the gravel parking area toward the car, his expression stoic, the insane look gone.

His dad reached the car and opened the driver’s door. He held something square and blue in his hand, and the boy’s heart sank when he recognized it. His father held it out for him.

With a shaking hand, the boy took his Walkman.

“I told you to stay in the car, John,” his dad said, his voice strangely calm.

John swallowed. “Sorry.” The word came out in a croak.

His dad took a deep breath and put both hands on the steering wheel. John was desperate to ask about Sally. What happened to her? But, after what he’d seen, he didn’t dare.

His father turned and put his hand on John’s leg. John looked beyond the wet spot around the crotch of his pants to his father’s hand. He was sure his father could feel his knee trembling.

“How about pancakes for dinner?” His father’s expression had softened, his demeanor restored to the man he’d known all his life. “It is Christmas, after all.”

John nodded, afraid if he spoke, he would break out in sobs. His father patted his leg and turned forward in his seat. With trembling hands, John connected his Walkman to the headphones that still hung around his neck and pulled them over his ears.

As he stared out the window and turned up the volume, tears blurred his vision. Almost certainly, Sally was dead. His father threw the gearshift into drive and sped out of the empty gravel parking area onto the winding, paved road—leaving Sally alone in the woods.

COMING JUNE 17

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