“Stop.”
The word hit me like a slap.
My foot was already moving before my brain fully processed what he’d said.
The vehicle lurched slightly as I hit the brakes, and through the rearview mirror I watched the rest of the convoy begin slowing behind us.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Drake didn’t explain.
Didn’t joke.
Didn’t elaborate.
He simply raised a hand and pointed through the windshield.
“Right there.”
I followed his finger.
At first, I didn’t see anything unusual.
Just trees.
The same endless forest we’d been driving through all day.
Then I looked again.
And suddenly the problem became impossible to ignore.
The undergrowth was wrong. Not obviously wrong. Subtly wrong.
The kind of wrong that only stood out because everything around it was natural.
The brush in th
