Jake ran. When he couldn’t run any longer, he jogged, and when he couldn’t jog, he walked. There was nothing else to do. The open forest, with its spread out trees and little underbrush, provided nowhere to hide. He would be sniffed out anyway if he tried. No tree roots reached up to trip him and no branches whipped at his face. The only noise was the crunch of fallen leaves under his feet in time with the harsh rasp of the breath in his lungs and the pounding of his heart. The tempo was the same as Jenine’s near the end. 

The sun was setting through the canopy ahead of him and the air grew chill with the evening, but light still glistened over the perspiration on his face. A bead of sweat rolled down to his slightly parted lips and the salt of it clung to his tongue. The rank odor of his own fear stood out against the soft scents of autumn, and if he could smell it, then the sharp noses of his pursuers would be able to follow him as clear as day. He couldn’t stop; if he stopped, they would catch him.

The light was low by the time Jake reached the river. He’d never had very good night vision, and without the muttering of the water he might’ve run right down the steep bank and into it without hardly noticing. The current could’ve swept him away downstream, far from his pursuers. Maybe that would’ve been for the best.

As it was, he collapsed at the very edge of the river and drank deeply out of his cupped hands. The water was cold enough to make his teeth ache, but he hardly noticed. It had been hours upon hours since he’d had anything to drink, and his head was pounding with what he knew to be the combined effects of exertion, hunger, and dehydration. When he had fled the house, he’d grabbed only a single energy bar and a half-empty bottle of water. He’d drank all the water too early on and left the plastic bottle beneath a tree. Littering was a sin, he supposed, and a crime, but he was already going to Hell and probably prison. Later, after hunger had out-competed the nausea, he had eaten the energy bar and put the wrapper in his pocket.

When Jake had sated his thirst, he sat back on his heels and stared out blankly ahead of him. The brook wasn’t very wide, but in the low light he could just make out the other bank. In the absense of sight, his hearing felt sharper, and it was harder to block out the murmur of the river as it called to mind things he did not want to remember. “No, please don’t,” the water hissed through polished stones like Jenine’s pearly white teeth.

Her turtleneck had been soft under his hands. Because of it, he had left no fingerprints on her skin, and if he’d only realized it at the time, it would’ve been easy to dump her body by the side of the road and get off scott-free. He knew from watching police procedurals that he, as the boyfriend of the deceased, would undoubtedly be the prime suspect, but he doubted that they would have been able to prove it in court. Now that Jake had run, however, the body left behind in the house they used to share, there was no possibility of being found innocent. He remembered feeling so angry, but now, he could barely even recall why. It didn’t much matter anymore, did it? All that mattered was that he had done it, and that now he wished to God that he hadn’t.

Not far to his left, a tree had fallen across the river. It was tall and straight and seemed to span from bank to bank, offering a bridge above the water. By taking this dry path, Jake could avoid the risk of hypothermia that wet clothes and a cold night would bring. However, if he waded through the water, it would disrupt his trail and the police dogs would lose his scent. Through swimming upstream or downstream some distance in the river, there was even a chance of him escaping entirely. 

Jake wondered whether it would make any difference what he chose. The cops would either catch him now or later; he was honest enough to admit that he wasn’t smart enough to avoid them forever. He didn’t deserve to anyway. The only reason he had run in the first place was that he could not stay in the house where Jenine had died. Now that he was far away, seated beside a river that he imagined would be beautiful come morning, he couldn’t force himself back to his feet. This would be his last night as a free man. He’d prefer not to spend it running through the woods in terror, tripping on his own feet in the dark. Finding a dry patch of grass beside the fallen tree instead, Jake lay down and stared up at the stars. They twinkled like the light that had gone from Jenine’s eyes. He hoped that in the morning, he could see her smile in the rising sun one last time.