I panned my head slowly in deliberate sections: a periscope slicing through the ghostly silence like a probe seeking the origin of the snapped twig. My hairs were set on end; the frigid and gloomy morning wore a poker-faced stillness, a velvet hush with a sharpened edge.
Like a spilled secret under a held breath, another series of cracks froze me in place. The dampened air coated my skin in a frost-sheened sweat. My ears rang, void of footsteps, void of clues. I strained to gauge how near.
The proximity was stifling.
Panic spiked through me.
I felt a corpse-like grip seal my scream. The clammy fingers over my mouth belonged to a face no more than a breath's breadth from my own.
Recognition hit like a hammer blow: It was Sam. I couldn't blink. Couldn't respond. I'd tracked nothing. She was as good as Rob. Maybe better: Rob was quiet.
Sam was silence.
Slowly she pressed a single finger against her lips, a gesture to remain mute. Her hand peeled away from my lower face as she pointed to the bag and signaled a retreat. I expended extra care to stand as slowly as humanly possible with careful maneuvers to avoid making our presence known.
We kept the blind between us and the embankment below as we slowly edged away.
Sam placed a hand on my shoulder, and, like an idiot, I jumped. She kept a still finger on her lips as her eyes rose upward. I followed her gaze to see into the canopy of a particularly large and notable tree, easily three or four times my width.
With a start, a strange sense of deja vu and realization came over me: It's the same damn tree...
Yep. Just like the other two times, we'd all been caught entirely unaware.
She wanted us to climb.