Chapter 6 - The Reckoning
I lunged from the shadows. I tackled him waist-high, using my entire body weight and the momentum of a full sprint.
We collided with a sickening thud, tumbling off the trail and rolling down a steep, muddy embankment. Sharp rocks and roots tore at my clothes and skin, but I didn't let go. We crashed into the base of an old, hollowed-out sycamore tree at the bottom of the slope.
Silas was bigger and stronger, fueled by a lifetime of hard labor and cruelty. He threw me off him with a violent grunt, scrambling to his knees. The flashlight had rolled away, casting long, eerie shadows over the muddy battleground.
He slashed blindly with the hunting knife, catching my left arm. A hot line of pain seared through my bicep, but the adrenaline masked the worst of it.
"You're dead, Brooks!" he spat, raising the knife for a fatal downward strike.
As he lunged, I grabbed a heavy, waterlogged branch from the mud. I swung it like a baseball bat, connecting sickeningly with his ribs. He grunted, stumbling sideways. Before he could recover, I drove my shoulder into his chest, pinning him against the massive trunk of the sycamore.
I grabbed the wrist holding the knife with both hands, twisting it with brutal force. Silas howled as the blade dropped into the mud. I didn't stop. I brought my knee up, striking him in the stomach, and as he doubled over, I hit him square in the jaw with a closed fist.
Silas's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into the freezing mud, unconscious.
I stood over him, my chest heaving, rain washing the blood from my arm. I wanted to kill him. Every fiber of my being screamed to pick up that knife and make him pay for what he did to Olivia.
But then, a soft voice called out from the top of the ridge.
"Ethan?"
I looked up. Emma and Ella were peering over the edge, silhouetted against the first faint, gray light of dawn breaking through the storm clouds.
May you like
I kicked Silas's knife into the ravine and pulled my zip tie from my jacket pocket—a habit from my city life for securing luggage—and bound his wrists tightly behind his back.
"It's over," I called up to them, my voice cracking. "He can't hurt you anymore."
