Chapter 5 - The Ridge of Bones
The rain had turned into a slushy, freezing sleet that stung my bare face like needles.
I ran blind. My sneakers slipped and tore against wet rocks, fallen branches, and thick, muddy ravines, but I didn't slow down. I couldn't. I held Ellie clamped against my shoulder, her four-year-old arms locked around my neck in a vice grip of pure terror, while my right hand held Isabella’s small, cold fingers so tightly I feared I might break them.
Behind us, deep in the valley near the highway, three distinct gunshots echoed through the night air, followed by a harsh, echoing cheer.
Then silence.
Frank was gone.
"Mommy," Ellie whimpered into my ear, her body shivering violently under her wet cotton sweater. "Mommy, my shoes are gone."
"Hold on to Mommy, sweetie," I gasped out, my lungs burning like fire with every breath of freezing air I pulled into my chest. "Keep your eyes closed. Don't look back."
Beside me, Isabella was running with a silent, terrifying efficiency. She didn't cry. She didn't complain about her bare legs scraping against the sharp thorn bushes. Her pale blue dress was torn and covered in black mud, but her grip on her mother's white swan music box—which she had somehow managed to haul out of the vehicle wreck—never slipped for a single second.
We climbed the steep, rocky incline of the pine ridge, the mud pulling at my feet with every step.
The wind howled through the high branches above us, drowning out the sounds of the forest, but every thirty seconds, a flash of bright, sweeping light cut through the trees behind us.
Flashlights. They were sweeping the woods in a coordinated grid search.
"They're following the footprints," I realized with a sudden, icy surge of panic. The deep tracks my sneakers were leaving in the mud were like an illuminated roadmap leading straight to us.
I stopped near a massive, overhanging granite ledge where the roots of a fallen pine tree created a narrow, cave-like hollow beneath the earth.
"In here," I whispered, shoving Isabella into the cramped, dark opening beneath the roots. "Get all the way to the back."
I lifted Ellie, sliding her in beside Isabella, then scrambled in after them, pulling loose pine needles, dark mud, and rotten bark over the entrance to block the light.
The hollow was tiny, barely three feet wide, smelling strongly of wet dirt, pine resin, and decaying leaves. We huddled together, our bodies pressed tight against one another, our freezing breaths mingling in small, white plumes of steam in the pitch-black space.
Footsteps approached.
Heavy, deliberate, crunching steps moving through the underbrush directly above our heads.
I pressed my hand firmly over Ellie’s mouth, pulling her head into my chest so hard I could feel her rapid heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. Isabella sat inches away, her back pressed against the damp soil, her hands holding the swan box against her sternum, her dark eyes staring directly at the thin slivers of moonlight filtering through our makeshift pine-needle screen.
"They went up the ridge!" a voice shouted from less than ten yards away. The accent was thick, nasal—pure Brooklyn streets. "Check the rock face! They can't have gone far with two little kids!"
A beam of blinding white light swept across the root system of our hollow.
The light lingered. It illuminated the wet pine needles blocking our entrance, casting long, geometric shadows across Isabella’s pale, dirt-streaked face.
I stopped breathing entirely. I closed my eyes, biting the inside of my lip until I tasted iron, praying with every shred of my soul that Ellie wouldn't cough, that Isabella wouldn't scream, that the man standing three feet above us wouldn't take one step to the left.
"Anything, Jimmy?" another voice called out from further down the slope.
"Nah," the man above us growled, spitting into the brush. "Just rocks and mud. They probably doubled back toward the lake. Let's get the dogs from the second truck."
"Dogs? Don Sal said no dogs. The local cops will hear them."
"Don Sal isn't the one tracking a housekeeper through a frozen swamp in October, Tommy. Get the damn dogs."
The heavy footsteps turned and began moving back down the muddy slope, the beams of light fading slowly into the thick grey mist of the lower ravine.
I didn't move for three full minutes. The air in the tiny hollow felt thick, toxic, saturated with the smell of my own sheer panic.
When I finally opened my eyes, Isabella was leaning close to my ear.
"They have dogs," she whispered, her voice steady, devoid of the hysterical terror that was currently threatening to shatter my own sanity. "Dogs can smell the swan."
I looked down at the white porcelain box in her lap. The rain had washed away the dirt on the lid, making the smooth swan shine like polished bone in the dim moonlight.
"What do you mean, Isabella?" I asked, my voice shaking uncontrollably.
Isabella reached out, her small fingers touching the bottom mechanism of the box where the secret compartment lay open.
"Mommy put perfume on the velvet inside," Isabella whispered. "Rose perfume. My daddy bought it for her in Paris. It smells very strong."
My stomach dropped into a bottomless pit. A bloodhound wouldn't even need a scent rag. A high-end French rose perfume trailing through a wet pine forest would lead a trailing dog straight to our hiding spot in less than fifteen minutes.
I looked at the porcelain box—the last physical memory Isabella had of her murdered mother, the vessel that had saved her life and revealed the truth of Sofia’s death.
"Isabella..." I choked out, tears finally springing to my eyes, burning hot against my freezing skin. "Sweetie, we... we have to leave it."
Isabella looked at the box. Then she looked at Ellie, who was shivering so hard her teeth were audibly chattering against one another under my cardigan.
May you like
Slowly, without saying a word, seven-year-old Isabella Moretti picked up the porcelain swan box, pressed her lips against the white wing one last time, and handed it to me.
"Put it in the stream," Isabella said softly, her dark eyes looking straight into mine with an absolute, terrifying maturity. "So the water takes Mommy away from them."
