“If he isn’t, nothing ventured, nothing gained, but it would be really disappointing. If he is there, that’s a whole different story.”
“And it doesn’t mean that he’s the guy either.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she admitted. “If it is him, being on a schedule like that would also make it very strange.”
“True.… So, do you want me to go first?”
She frowned. “I’m wondering if whoever is first makes a difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, just two people. One slightly ahead of each other, one taking a stronger blow than the other, and him having to come up and knock the other one out. I’m wondering if he would consider me in the front to be the worst idea, whereas, if you were in the front, he would potentially knock you out first. And then think that I was the easier victim and come after me.”
“Oh, wow. I hadn’t considered that.”
“He can see us too,” she shared.
“And yet, if he’s watching us right now, he’ll think we’re not much in the way of runners at all.”
“Maybe not.” She laughed. “Let’s go then.”
She bolted down the pathway first, not giving him a chance to take over. Her gaze kept searching the surrounding area, looking for the man, and when she got to the spot where he should have been, instead of giving any warning, she veered immediatelyup the hillside, where he should have been waiting. Nobody was there. She stopped, looked around, and then she heard it. Somebody scrambling through the bushes. She took off at a run, Simon right behind her.
“Stop,” she roared out, “police.”
A shocked gasp filled the air and then footsteps running as far and as fast as they could. She went left. Simon went right. And they came in a circle around where he was. But somehow there were always more pathways and more trees.
“Damn it,” she said, when she met Simon in the middle of the pathway. “This place is a bloody maze.”
“No way he would have stayed on the path,” he reminded her. “When you think about it, it’s a maze of pathways, but all roads lead to the same places.”
She swore. “Shit, and he’s gone.”
She raced up to the parking area, looking to see if anyone disappeared or had tried to pull out of the parking lot. Instead, it was complete silence. She turned toward Simon and glared. He held up his hands. “We can go back and wait, or we can sit here and wait,” he suggested.
“Nothing’s here—no vehicles and no reason for him to come here and wait for us,” she noted. “He could just slide out anywhere along the road here.”
He nodded. “But at least you know somebody was here.”
“I do, and somebody who didn’t want to meet the police.”
“Honest to God,” Simon said, “coming out of the dark woods like that, I’m not sure anybody would have stayed nearby.”
“Catching them by surprise is usually the best, but now he’s likely alerted that we’re on his trail, so now he probably won’t show.”
“I don’t know about that,” Simon countered. “He might change the time, the location, but, if you think about it, hispattern is pretty set. For whatever reason he’s doing this, it’s probably like he feels he has to.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s true, but I wonder. I just wonder how much any or all of this is just for show.”
“Just for show?” He stopped and stared at her in shock.
She nodded. “Yeah, just for show, and how much of it is to cover up the first murder?”
“Are you saying that somebody is killing other people, just to throw you guys off the scent?”
She nodded slowly. “As stupid as that may sound,” she noted, “there are multiple instances where people kill more than one in order to hide their actual true target among a few others.”
“And that brings you back to the first ones, doesn’t it?”