Chapter 1 Chapter 1

PROLOGUE

~Taylor~

Seventeen seconds into the sound file, a shriek ripped through the studio monitor headphones, and I yanked them off so quickly that the plastic band snagged in my hair, jerking my head sideways as several strands went with it.

“Shit,” I hissed, reaching behind my ear and fumbling with the band until I managed to untangle myself without sacrificing part of my scalp.

Dropping the headphones onto my desk with a hollow clatter, I pressed my palm against the tender spot above my ear while my pulse continued hammering against my ribs hard enough to make the adrenaline buzzing through my body feel completely unreasonable for somebody sitting alone in a sound booth.

My computer screen apparently disagreed. The player had frozen exactly where I'd stopped it, leaving a massive, jagged spike of red sound lines cutting through the middle of the track and the digital cursor blinking beside it as though patiently waiting for me to put the headphones back on.

“Well, that was fucking horrifying,” I muttered, letting my hand fall from my hair while keeping both of them safely away from the mouse.

The cursor blinked again, and I stared at it for another second before reaching toward the open box of Fruity Pebbles beside my keyboard instead, because listening to somebody scream like they were being murdered might require a little more preparation than I'd originally anticipated.

Shoving my fingers into the box, I grabbed a dry handful and popped it into my mouth, letting the neon-pink and yellow sugar crunch between my teeth while I looked through the double-paned glass wall of the sound booth.

The rest of the studio stretched dark and empty toward the glowing red emergency exit sign, with rows of cubicles disappearing into shadows and computer towers blinking amber beneath abandoned desks, while across the floor, the digital wall clock changed from 8:33 to 8:34 PM.

Maybe staying late hadn't been one of my better ideas. Then again, glancing toward the wastebasket beside my desk, where an empty bag of Lay's barbecue chips lay crumpled beneath three paper cups wearing dried rings of coffee sludge, neither had my decision to consider vending-machine snacks an acceptable substitute for dinner.

Swallowing the cereal, I wiped my fingers against my jeans and reached for the headphones again.

All right, dead guy, let's try this again.

The file had landed in the podcast's shared inbox fourteen minutes ago from an email address that looked as though somebody had dropped a keyboard down a flight of stairs.

xj99_lkjh@protonmail.com.

There hadn't been a subject line or anything in the body of the email, just an audio attachment I'd run through the virus scanner before opening because years of working in digital media had taught me that clicking random files from strangers was an excellent way to spend the following morning explaining to IT why the entire network now belonged to somebody in Belarus.

The file had come back clean. What was recorded on it was beginning to look considerably less reassuring.

Settling the foam cups over my ears again, I dragged the playback bar to the beginning and clicked the mouse.

Static hissed through the headphones before wind slammed against what sounded like a cheap phone microphone, filling the track with a rough, uneven roar, and beneath it, a man's shallow breaths rattled hard enough that I leaned closer before consciously realizing I'd moved.

Something crunched beneath his feet. Gravel, probably, although the wind made it difficult to separate one sound from another.

I leaned farther forward until the edge of the desk pressed into my ribs, watching the waveform move across the screen while I forced myself to listen past the scream I knew was coming and concentrate on everything I'd missed the first time.

The wind continued battering the microphone while the man's breathing came faster, his footsteps striking the loose ground beneath him until a sharp crack of what sounded like a branch snapped through the recording.

“Shit,” the man gasped through the speakers, his voice almost disappearing beneath the wind as his breathing hitched. “Shit...shit...”

The rhythm of his footsteps changed almost immediately, the slower crunch against the gravel becoming a rapid succession of impacts as his breathing turned ragged, and whatever pace he'd been moving at before disappeared when he broke into a full sprint. Then something struck the ground behind him.

My finger hit the mouse before I consciously decided to stop the recording. The sudden silence inside the headphones left me staring at the lines while I tried to decide whether I'd actually heard another impact beneath his footsteps or whether seventeen seconds of terrified breathing had already convinced my imagination to start contributing.

“What the hell was that?” I murmured, dragging the playback bar backward five seconds before clicking play again.

The branch snapped through my headphones. The man cursed, his feet pounding against gravel as something heavier struck the ground behind him.

Frowning, I stopped the track and pulled it back again, this time closing my eyes when I pressed play so I could better hear the rhythm.

The man's steps came first, two distinct impacts repeating beneath the sound of his breathing, while directly behind them came a second pattern that was heavier, faster and close enough together that the individual sounds nearly overlapped.

I opened my eyes and replayed it once more. Four separate impacts.

My hand slowly slipped away from the cereal box as I leaned back in my chair. “That's comforting,” I muttered, tapping one finger against the edge of my keyboard while I stared at the track.

Florida had no shortage of animals capable of ruining somebody's evening, and I'd recorded enough of them over the years to have a reasonably good idea what most sounded like.

An alligator moving over gravel would have given me the heavy scrape of its body along with the impact of its feet, while a wild boar would have sounded more like a small drunk bulldozer crashing through everything unfortunate enough to be growing nearby. A panther was possible, but I knew better  as I began playing the section again.

The man accelerated, and the four heavier impacts accelerated with him. When his stride faltered, they slowed, only to immediately match him again when he started running harder.

I pulled the track back several seconds and listened once more, watching the soundwaves this time while my fingers stopped moving against the keyboard; the distance between them never changed. Whatever was behind him wasn't gaining ground, but it wasn't falling back either, and the longer the recording continued, the harder the man breathed while those heavier impacts remained steady.

“Why aren't you catching him?” I whispered.