Wildest Hearts

bushes. The flashlight beam waved wildly about until she regained her footing.

    “Take it easy,” Annie instructed herself through gritted teeth. “So you're a little new at this. You've seen enough television to know how it's done. You'll get the hang of it.”

    She continued her trek around the small cabin, pointing the flashlight through each window. The bedroom was in disarray. Wally Thorpe apparently did not believe in making his bed or in emptying his trash. The closet doors stood open. Annie peered more closely and saw that there were no clothes hanging inside.

    Curiosity began to overcome her nervousness. When she reached the back door and found that it was unlocked, Annie took a deep breath, steeled herself, and opened it.

    The cabin had a musty odor, as if it had been closed up for a long time. But that wasn't the worst of it. The smell of decaying food in the kitchen was the clearest indication that no one had been living here in some time. The cottage reeked.

    Annie walked slowly through the rooms, careful not to touch anything. She had been right about the clothes in the closet. There weren't any. Nor were there any clothes in the drawers. There were towels on the bathroom floor but no sign of shaving gear.

    It finally struck Annie that there was a general air of a hurried departure about the cottage. It was as if Wally Thorpe had come home one day, thrown his clothes and personal belongings into a suitcase, and fled.

    Annie walked back into the kitchen. The smell was worst in that room. She started to retreat, but her eye was caught by the sight of a calendar featuring nude models on the wall near the phone.

    It wasn't the unreal size of the featured lady's bare breasts that fascinated Annie. It was the fact that the woman in the picture proudly bore the title of Miss October that riveted her attention.

    This was late November. Wally Thorpe had not been around to change the calendar to the new month. He had been gone several weeks.

    Holding her nose, Annie went closer. The calendar had a square for each day of the month. There were short, cryptic notes in some of the squares.

    The seventh of October, the day her brother had disappeared, was circled in red.

    Annie stared at the calendar in mounting horror. A coincidence, she told herself. Perhaps Wally Thorpe had decided that was the day he was going to quit his job. No, Sarah said he had left two days later.

    Then Annie noticed the phone number that had been scrawled across the fifth of October. There was something familiar about it although she could not immediately identify it. Then it hit her. She had dialed that number herself on more than one occasion in the recent past.

    There was a pen hanging on a string near the calendar. Annie reached for it with her gloved hand and used it to jot down the number Thorpe had written on the calendar.

    She was stuffing the paper back into her purse when she heard a board squeak somewhere in the distance. For an instant Annie thought her heart was going to stop. A split second later adrenaline pumped through her like an icy wave of electricity. It shot across her nerve endings and stirred the hairs on the back of her neck.

    She switched off the flashlight and was immediately shrouded in cold darkness.

    She couldn't tell if the squeak had come from inside the house or from the steps outside the front door. She strained to listen and heard nothing. The sensation of being watched was stronger than it had been earlier.

    Annie was afraid to move and at the same time compelled to run. She fought for control of her muscles and managed to take one step toward the back door.

    With great concentration, she succeeded in taking another step. And then a third.

    She reached the back door and twisted the knob slowly. The door made a soft groaning noise as she opened it.

    Annie hesitated in the doorway, staring into the unfathomable darkness. Nothing moved outside, at least nothing that she could see. She gathered her courage and went cautiously down the steps.

    She stopped in the blackest shadows cast by the side of the house and looked longingly at her car in the drive. She was going to have to make a dash for it.

    Annie gripped her keys in her fist and ran for the car.

    No one stopped her. No one called out. No one fired at her. A moment later she was safe inside the car. She locked the doors and jammed the keys into the ignition. The engine started with a roar of protest.

    Annie snapped the car