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  The Final Girl

  A Wolf Lake Thriller

  Dan Padavona

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

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  Show Your Support for Indie Thriller Authors

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Before Shayla Pierce turned in for bed, she checked Brooke one more time. Inside the tiny bedroom at the end of the hall, her four-year-old daughter curled beneath the covers, the blanket pulled past her eyes, her legs running across the mattress, as though something chased the girl in a dream.

  This is how it had been since two weeks ago, during their camping trip to Wolf Lake State Park. Brooke swore a monster had watched her through the dusty window and tried to break inside the cabin. The panic attacks forced Shayla to shorten their vacation. Since returning home, her daughter never slept through the night. Brooke claimed the monster followed them home. It hid in the closet and crept out after Shayla turned out the lights. Sometimes it slipped beneath Brooke’s bed and waited for the child to close her eyes.

  Every night, Shayla followed the same routine—tuck her daughter beneath the covers, drop to all fours and check under the bed, then open the closet, pushing aside the clothes hangers to ensure the hideous beast wasn’t inside. Now Brooke’s fears affected Shayla. Tonight, while she searched beneath the bed, she had the creeping sensation something horrible would stare back at her. A demon with razor-sharp talons and jagged teeth. But that was crazy. There were no monsters hiding in the house.

  Her child’s imagination never ceased to amaze Shayla. She couldn’t blame Brooke. When Shayla was young, night terrors made her flee into her parents’ bedroom, before the devils emerged from the shadows. But nightmares never debilitated Shayla the way they did Brooke. Shayla’s nightmares had been rare, maybe once every month or two. Not every night.

  Shayla wondered if Brooke’s nightmares stemmed from not having a father. She’d adopted Brooke and raised her in a single-parent household, caring for her girl as best as she could. Being fatherless must have unsettled Brooke in ways Shayla never predicted.

  Shayla filled her glass at the sink and padded barefoot from the kitchen through the living room. The lights were off. Moonlight puddled on the carpet and lent the downstairs an eerie quality that fed her paranoia. After checking the locks, she carried the water down the dark hallway and into the bedroom, where she placed the glass on the nightstand. She slid into bed and pulled the comforter to her chin. Venetian blinds invited slashes of lunar light into the room. Through the blinds, the neighbor’s roof appeared glazed in frost, another trick of the moonlight. The summer heat guaranteed the first killing freeze was months away.

  A shadow rolled across the neighbor’s rooftop. Shayla flinched. Whatever moved through the night, it was gone now.

  Inside the state park, it had been easy to imagine a threat hidden among the trees and watching from the forest. Now that they were home, surrounded by familiar faces in a safe neighborhood, Brooke’s night terrors should have stopped.

  For a long time, she listened for Brooke. The girl often whimpered in her sleep. But it was quiet down the hall tonight. A good sign, Shayla thought. Shayla and Brooke both needed a good night’s sleep.

  The phone hummed on the nightstand. Shayla snatched it up and checked the message. Mr. Collins sent her a briefing on their latest client. She sighed, wishing her boss would leave her alone after hours. As an attorney, Shayla faced long, stressful days. Home was her sanctuary. Though she often worked for an hour after supper while Brooke played, Shayla put the office out of her mind when bedtime arrived. Otherwise, she’d stay awake all night, fretting about cases and office politics.

  Shayla shut off the phone and placed it face-down on the nightstand. With a yawn, she curled beneath the sheets. Overhead, the fan threw strange shapes across the ceiling.

  She closed her eyes.

  Thump.

  Something moved inside the house. Shayla lay on her back, eyes wide open, the curdling terror that someone was inside the house making her wish she hadn’t turned off the phone. She told herself the sound was nothing more than the house settling. The possibility of Brooke climbing out of bed and wandering through the hallway gave Shayla pause. Her daughter never sleepwalked. Unless the nightmares provoked Brooke to flee the imagined monsters.

  Shayla sat up. The door stood open so she could hear Brooke. Silence bled down the hallway.

  A cloud passed over the moon and plunged the neighborhood into infinite darkness. Even the streetlights failed to push back the black. Shayla reached for her phone, deciding it was best to leave it on all night, even if that meant Mr. Collins rousting her awake with messages. Didn’t her boss ever sleep?

  Her trembling hand fumbled with the phone. The phone dropped to the floor and rattled against the hardwood, the noise deafeningly loud amid the quiet. Cursing, she reached over the bed and felt something push against the mattress. Subtle, but she’d noticed. Her arm froze in place, dangling over the side of the bed. She pulled it back before Brooke’s monster could grab her wrist.

  Now she was acting crazy. There were no monsters.

  So what had caused the mattress to move?

  It must have been an old spring popping into place. Shayla determined to purchase a new mattress, something more supportive than the hand-me-down she’d slept on since she and Morgan purchased the little house in Kane Grove.

  Shayla grabbed the phone off the floor and placed it on the pillow. Huddled inside the covers, she pressed the power button. Nothing. She tried again. The darn phone refused to awaken. She hoped she hadn’t damaged the phone when she dropped it. As she fiddled with the button, the mattress shifted again, as if a beast crawled beneath her bed.

  Her heart slammed against her chest, ready to rip through her skin.

  Shayla stared at the night-shrouded window. Her brain searched for reason as fear pushed her to the brink of insanity. There was something under the bed. It wasn’t her imagination.

  Except there had to be some explanation. Her leg had spasmed, or
another spring had popped. Beds didn’t move on their own.

  She pushed the covers off and sat up, prepared to scream until blood coated her lungs, if the mattress shifted again. It didn’t. That didn’t stop her from searching the room for a weapon. Her eyes settled on the lamp on the nightstand. She dropped one hesitant leg off the side of the bed. Her toes touched the bare floor.

  No clawed hand reached out and grabbed her ankle.

  Shayla released a breath and swung her other leg off the bed. Then she got down on all fours to check the bed frame, wondering if it had broken after years of use.

  The man’s eyes stared back at her from beneath the bed. Crazed and filled with bloodlust.

  Shayla opened her mouth to scream. He was too fast. The man pressed a cloth against her face and squeezed. She pounded her fists against his arms, barely able to fight as shock crippled her. There was a chemical scent to the cloth, something that sapped her strength and made her eyelids droop. Her legs pushed against the floorboards and struggled to find purchase.

  Holding the cloth over her mouth and stifling her cries, he slid out from beneath the bed and pressed his massive body down on hers. Her last thought before she drifted unconscious was what the man would do to Brooke after he finished with her.

  The madman chuckled in her ear as the room turned black.

  2

  A welcome breeze played through Chelsey Byrd’s hair, keeping the heat at bay, as she propped her arms on the gunwale. Sheriff Thomas Shepherd piloted his new motorboat, with Jack, the enormous, wolf-like dog he’d rescued seated beside him. The dog’s tongue hung out while he smiled, looking back and forth between Thomas and Chelsey.

  Sunlight sparkled over the waves. It was an idyllic summer day on Wolf Lake, as Chelsey glanced over her shoulder and studied Thomas’s A-frame house beyond the shoreline. Chelsey had accepted her boyfriend’s invitation to sell her house and move in with him this summer. As she watched with amusement, he patted Jack on the head and pointed at a passing vessel, speaking to Jack as if the dog were human. Thomas possessed kind eyes and an unruly mop of hair that refused to yield to any brush or comb. To Chelsey, he forever looked like a ten-year-old in an adult’s body. A doctor had diagnosed Thomas with Asperger’s syndrome when he was young. He’d grown up awkward and shy before Chelsey met him during high school and fell in love.

  The couple passing on the lake honked and waved, and Thomas held up a hand. Thomas never stopped amazing Chelsey. He’d graduated from Cortland with a criminal justice degree, then moved to Los Angeles, leaving the safety of his hometown village and his parents to join the LAPD. Before long, he rose to detective, a position he held until a gangland bullet struck him in the back and nearly paralyzed him. Nobody questioned Thomas’s resilience. He was a fighter. After rehabilitating his injury, he returned home to Wolf Lake, accepted a menial deputy position, and rose to interim sheriff after Sheriff Gray retired. During his first month as deputy, Thomas shot and killed serial killer Jeremy Hyde, the man who’d terrorized Nightshade County that spring. As Gray had predicted, Thomas ran unopposed during the election.

  “You’re smiling.”

  Thomas’s voice jostled Chelsey out of her thoughts.

  “I am.”

  “What are you so happy about?”

  Without replying, she gestured at the pristine lake, the house they shared, and at Thomas and Jack. They were an unexpected family, one she never could have foreseen. As a teenager, she’d struggled with depression. After the depression became too much for Chelsey to bear, she broke up with Thomas, leaving her former boyfriend confused and alone. Then she abandoned her friends and family, as if a part of her feared the depression was contagious and would infect the ones she loved.

  Thomas read the worry creasing her brow. Shutting down the motor, he set the boat to drift wherever the waves took them. He dropped an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. Somehow he’d sensed that was exactly what she needed, perhaps because he’d survived so much hardship in his own life.

  “The dreams started again,” she said, resting her head against his chest.

  “The ones where the depression returns?”

  “I don’t understand why. I’m doing everything right, aren’t I? Therapy every week, my exercise routine is on point, and I never forget my medication.”

  “And you’re surrounded by people who care about you.”

  Jack nuzzled her leg.

  “And by Jack, too.”

  “They’re only dreams, Chelsey. Don’t read into them. I still have nightmares where I have a final exam in college, and I haven’t—”

  “—come to class all semester,” she finished for him. “Same.”

  “Which is ridiculous, since I graduated with honors.”

  “You love to include that little tidbit every time college comes up.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? Some students are destined for greatness.”

  She caught the sarcasm in his grin and shook her head, laughing. “I barely passed my freshman year.”

  “You dealt with a lot that year.”

  “What if it comes back, Thomas?”

  “Don’t talk like that. There’s no reason it should.”

  “There was no reason for it to show up during high school, either. Yet it did.”

  “Whatever happens, I’ll be here for you. Always.”

  Chelsey kissed his lips as Jack lay at their feet, panting in the sun.

  “Take stock in all you’ve accomplished,” he said. “Your private investigation firm is the best in the county. Clients come to you from Syracuse, Buffalo, and Albany. Wolf Lake Consulting is a godsend for the Nightshade County Sheriff’s Department. We wouldn’t solve half our cases without you.”

  “Well, I have talented people working with me. I can’t believe I almost lost Raven and LeVar. At least the firm is on solid ground again.”

  Village-wide reassessments on the firm’s property and Chelsey’s house almost pushed her into bankruptcy earlier that summer. She sold her house to a man named Micah, who purchased the property after his wife became abusive toward him and his daughter. Chelsey had stopped by to visit yesterday. Micah had a question about the sump pump in the cellar. Chelsey was pleased to find the girl hanging out with a new friend in the backyard, enjoying the tree house Micah had erected in the old elm near the back fence.

  They were halfway across the lake now, drifting toward Wolf Lake State Park, where their friend, Darren Holt, held the ranger position. Darren lived with Chelsey’s partner, Raven Hopkins, in a cabin beside the camping grounds.

  “Hey,” Chelsey said. “Maybe you should steer this thing before your precious boat smashes into a dock.”

  “Good idea.”

  Her phone buzzed with a received message. She tilted the screen away from the sun and snorted.

  “LeVar is watching us from the guest house.”

  Thomas stood on tiptoe, as though a few extra inches would help him see. LeVar Hopkins lived in the guest house behind the A-frame. A former member of the feared Harmon Kings gang, LeVar pursued a criminal justice degree at the local community college, while he interned at Chelsey’s private investigation firm.

  “What does LeVar have to say?”

  “Something about a three-hour tour. Yeah, he’s quoting Gilligan’s Island.”

  Chuckling, Thomas restarted the motor and swung the boat around, pointing the bow toward the west side of the lake, where Serena Hopkins, mother to Raven and LeVar, lived. On the southern shore, the Mourning house stood beside the A-frame, shaded as the sun wandered toward the western sky. From the middle of the lake, Chelsey could see the concrete pathways Thomas had carved for Scout Mourning. The fifteen-year-old had lost her ability to walk after a vehicle collision three years ago. The girl had a knack for catching criminals and belonged to three internet sleuthing forums. Her research had helped Thomas identify Jeremy Hyde. After the Nightshade County Sheriff’s Department, with the aid of Wolf Lake Consulting, caugh
t murderer Kendra Harmon earlier that summer, they’d celebrated at Wolf Lake State Park. LeVar swore Scout had moved her leg while he carried her through the shallows.

  Chelsey leaned on the hull and studied the Mourning house. Confined to a wheelchair, Scout pushed herself down the concrete path toward the shoreline, while her mother, Naomi, hung two beach towels on a clothesline.

  “The surgery has to work,” Chelsey said. “I can’t imagine how Scout will react if it doesn’t.”

  “Have faith. The doctors say she has a fighter’s chance. If all goes well, her legs will regain movement. She might need a walker for a few months and a cane thereafter, but it’s a start.”

  “Why do horrible things happen to beautiful people?”

  “You’ve been worried since Naomi scheduled Scout’s operation. Did you ever stop to think your stress over the surgery might be causing the bad dreams?”

  She brushed the long black curls off her shoulder. “It’s possible.”

  Though she doubted it. Yes, she worried sick over the forthcoming surgery, which loomed like a black cloud on the horizon, a storm inching closer every day. Yet there was something else biting at her, something at the edge of subconscious thought. What was it?