Not again. I can't let it all start over again. I've got to stop this madness, even if it costs me everything. I can't live if I take another life…and now Carissa.

She's the light that fills Cedar Hollow. She brings sunshine from the gloom that seems to haunt Cooper land. I'll take my own life before I lay a hand on —

But she knows too much about me. She's been searching for secrets that have to stay hidden, telling everybody she's gathering information for her school report. What if she's lying? Maybe the report is a cover-up….

Now that I think about it, she's been looking at me differently.

The kid is too smart for a twelve-year-old. She has other ways of knowing about me. I can't trust her. I trusted before and look what happened. I can't ever let my guard down or I'll lose everything.

I can't let Carissa tell what she knows.

Carissa Cooper stepped carefully along the muddy lane that led from the sawmill to the house, hugging the old business ledger that Dad had asked her to fetch. Aiming her flashlight at the tire tracks in front of her, she glanced into the darkness. Fear crept up and down her spine like spiders on patrol.

She wasn't usually scared of the dark anymore, but something about the movement of shadows bugged her. They shifted, changing shapes, skittering along the forested roadside with the movement of her flashlight, like the monsters that had waited for her in her closet and under the bed when she was six. She'd been scared of everything then, right after Mom left.

Now she knew better. Still, tonight she couldn't help imagining that eyes were watching her from those waiting clumps of brush and weeds.

If only her big brother Justin had come with her. If only he weren't still so mad at her.

"Should've kept my mouth shut," she muttered under her breath.

The sound of a quiet thud reached her from somewhere deep in the forest to her right. Horse's hooves? She stopped and listened, but all she heard was the whisper of leaves brushing against each other in a puff of wind. The branches made shadows leap across the trunk of the old walnut tree in the glow of her flashlight…like bony arms reaching out for her….

The breeze died and the movement stopped.