Keep Calm and Kill Your Wife by Lucky Stevens Page A

ago. And soon, thought Hart, it’ll be gone.
    He yearned for civilization, feeling both anxious and a little melodramatic. After all, he was far from lost and it hadn’t been that long. But still, he kept feeling like any moment now he’d see something, a marker, a bend in the road, anything that would announce to him that the cabin was just around the corner.
    He looked at his cell phone. Why did I pick this time, of all times, to forget to charge my phone , he thought, seeming to have forgotten about the seven-thousand un-forest-related times he had done the same thing.
    Oh, well. One more hour should do it. But he had stopped believing himself, having figured that one more hour should have done it, several times before.

NINETEEN
    D ESPITE HIS ANXIOUSNESS to get back to the cabin, Hart decided to sit down and take a rest. He was worried that he might fall asleep and that when he woke up, it would be dark. But his worries were unfounded as he had too much on his mind to sleep.
    He was right about it getting dark, though. The sun was dropping out of sight, the tall trees seeming to hasten its descent.
    He decided to speed up a little, his body running on fumes. God was he thirsty.
    And then he stopped. He heard rumblings off in the distance. He strained his ears. It sounded like the crackling footfalls of some animal as its paws hit the forest’s needle strewn foundation. And then the muffled sounds of speech. Someone was coming.
    Hart slowly moved himself sideways to small group of thick and closely-growing trees until he was thoroughly out of sight.
    “The Lakers suck this year.” It was a man. He was about twenty years old and looked like a college student. He was talking to another man about the same age. They were walking at a brisk pace and didn’t even come close to seeing Hart who was peering around the trees.
    Their voices got louder as they moved closer and closer to Hart, their conversation carefree without the slightest hint that someone might be listening.
    “They need another superstar, dude. Kobe can’t do it all by himself,” said the other man.
    Hart could feel himself breathing hard. Why do I feel like a fugitive? He didn’t know. But he did know that his gut told him not to be seen. That his story would somehow be his own if no one knew where he was.
_______________
    Hart put the key in the lock and turned the knob. There was no reason it shouldn’t open but for some reason he had his doubts.
    When he got inside the cabin, he made a beeline for the kitchen sink and filled a large glass of water. He downed it, filled it back up and downed it again. Then he stumbled to the couch and collapsed, his chest rising and falling.
    It had been almost two hours since he had seen the two hikers in the forest, and the sun was firmly tucked in for the night. It was good to be home—or in the cabin, at least.
    After a moment of lying down, Hart began to nod off. A second later, his head snapped forward and shook. He made a gasping sound and sat up straight. He had to know what was happening. He turned on the T.V., shocked by what he heard next.

TWENTY
    A S HE EXPECTED, the explosion was all over the local stations. The thing that surprised Hart was that apparently he, himself, was dead.
    Two—not one—bodies were found among the burning wreckage, specifically at ground zero, a late model Acura.
    Whitman, the current owner of Huncke’s convenience store and gas station, had recognized the couple from an earlier meeting a few days prior.
    “They seemed like a nice couple. Spoke with them a couple days ago when they came in for some snacks and such,” Whitman said into a microphone held in front of him.
    Then the mike was flicked back toward the reporter, a nicely dressed woman, mid-thirties with a flapper-style hat. “Do you have any idea, Mr. Whitman, who they are or where they were staying?”
    “Well, as you can see, everything here was destroyed but I do remember their names from his credit card. A