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Willow Creek. It s a place where people go to start over, where the past doesn t follow them. The people there are good people, kind people. They will help you." Ruth had felt a glimmer of hope, a flicker of light in the darkness. Willow Creek. The name had echoed in her mind, a promise of safety, of peace, of a new beginning. "Willow Creek," she had repeated. "How do I get there?" The preacher had given her directions, had written down the name of a church, had told her to ask for the Reverend Thomas. He had given her money for a bus ticket, had packed her a bag of food, had sent her on her way with a blessing. "Go with God, Ruth," he had said. "And may He keep you safe." The letter had arrived the next day, slipped under the door of the preacher s rectory. It was a plain white envelope with no return address, no postmark, nothing to indicate where it had come from. Inside, there was a single sheet of paper, covered in typewritten words: We know you re in Willow Creek. We re coming. Leave now, or we ll take the boy. Ruth had read the letter over and over, her heart pounding with fear. She had no idea who had sent it, no idea how they had found her. But she had known that she had to run. She had packed her bags, taken William s hand, and fled into the night. PART THREE: THE HUNT CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE MEN IN BLACK CARS Ruth had seen them for the first time on a Tuesday, three days after the preacher s warning. She had been walking back to the motel from the diner where she worked, William s small hand clasped tightly in hers, her mind churning with the terror of the letter that had been slipped under the preacher s door. The sun was sinking low on the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and blood orange, casting long shadows that stretched across the cracked pavement like the fingers of reaching hands. The air was thick with the smell of dust and diesel and the faint, sickly sweetness of decaying magnolia blossoms that had fallen from the trees and rotted in the gutters. She had noticed the car first because it was so out of place. Willow Creek was a town of rusted pickups and dented sedans, of vehicles held together with baling wire and prayer, of trucks that had seen better decades and cars that had been patched and repatched so many times that their original color was a distant memory. The car that was parked across the street from the motel was none of those things. It was a sleek black sedan, so shiny that it seemed to glow in the fading light, its surface reflecting the sky like a mirror, its chrome trim gleaming with an almost obscene perfection. Its engine was idling, a low, throaty purr that seemed to vibrate through the ground beneath her feet, a sound so smooth and powerful that it seemed to belong to a different world entirely. Its windows were tinted so dark that she couldn t see inside, couldn t see who was watching her from behind that impenetrable glass, couldn t see the faces of the men who had been hunting her for so long. She had felt a chill run down her spine, a primal fear that made her blood run cold and her heart stutter in her chest. She had stopped walking, her body