Chapter 196
~ Franklin ~
The forest had gone quiet again. It wasn't the natural, rhythmic hum of the insects or the rustle of the wind; it was a heavy, suffocating silence that settled over the canopy like a shroud. It was the kind of quiet that watched you. I felt it before I understood it—a prickling pressure at the base of my skull, a subtle shift in the barometric pressure of the clearing. Something was fundamentally wrong.
I sat motionless where they had forced us to ground, my back pressed against the rough, moss-covered bark of a mahogany tree. I stretched my right leg out, trying to find a millimeter of relief from the agonizing, rhythmic throb that pulsed through my thigh. Every heartbeat was a hammer blow against my bone. Beside me, Raquel was a statue of alert silence, her eyes tracking every shadow.
