… “Can you help me?”
The man nodded, but his eyes narrowed, intent on this intruder, this new threat to his carefully plotted safety net. He began to close in slowly.
The hiker visibly relaxed. “Thank God. I thought I’d be forced to camp out tonight.”
The mouth and eyes that smiled back at the hiker chilled the surrounding air. The man loved fools such as this hiker, blind idiots who never suspected that a normal façade could harbor the blackest of souls. Such naïveté always delighted him, made his hands itch with the anticipation of the kill. But for now, he gestured to his left, toward a dirt path barely visible through the trees.
As expected, the hiker turned, eager for directions. The man’s smile widened. He lifted the metal detector (Prologue, p. 2).
