The sound of a gunshot had Desa and Kalia running for the forest. Side by side, they bounded down the pyramid steps and through the soft grass. Miri and the others were out there somewhere, but so far as Desa knew, she and her friends were the only people within thirty miles of this place.
Something was very wrong.
As soon as they entered the forest, the ground changed. Desa found herself sliding through muck, ducking under branches and leaping over ditches. The trees stood so close together they almost seemed to crowd in on her.
“You don’t think…” Kalia began. “You don’t think that Miri might have done something rash?”
“Like what?”
The sheriff hopped over a root with the grace of a loping deer and landed on the other side, never breaking stride. “She was feeling very guilty,” Kalia s
