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Kelvin stopped grinning now. His face became steely.

“Indeed, I do know where,” he said, reaching into his pocket for something. Steph felt herself being pulled tighter to Ashley’s body. “I just don’t get why when you can’t go anywhere!”

Ashley growled a revolting profanity before Steph felt his body slacken again. Ahead of him, Kelvin dangled the keys to the truck.

Steph could hear Ashley muttering to himself under his breath, but it was so quiet that she couldn’t make out a single syllable despite her close proximity. Eventually, he sighed.

“Fine,” he said, pushing Steph a little further ahead of him but still gripping her collar. “The girl for the keys.”

It made sense. Steph could see that he genuinely feared the risk of running down the slope without any collateral, but what choice did he really have? Kelvin basically had him in checkmate. More importantly, what plan did Kelvin have to stop him from running down the slope and reaching the truck? Was Davey down there now?

“No.”

Steph blinked.

“What?” she said before even Ashley could digest what had just happened. Martina, for the first time, stopped flicking her eyes left and right and allowed herself a small smile. Kelvin ignored Steph. His eyes looked just past her.

Ashley seemed as surprised as Steph. His bargaining chip was worth nothing. Even so, Steph noticed that he had looked at her as soon as the no had come out. Despite having her at knifepoint, he understood the insult that had been delivered.

“Why ‘no’?” Steph said.

Still, Kelvin ignored her. His eyes were firmly set on Ashley.

A quite sudden and explosive rage started to build within Steph. It was a rage that enveloped everything. The world around her and all its context seemed to melt to nothing in the face of the heat she felt.

Eventually Ashley asked, taking his eyes off Steph, lowering the knife a little further, “Yes, why won’t you trade?”

Kelvin shifted his feet slightly.

Steph took a step forward. She meant to march right up to Kelvin. What then? Bury her knee into his bollocks? Shout at him until she got an answer as to why he viewed her life as expendable. Did he? Did he think Ashley would kill her? Surely he at least knew he might. He’d killed Michael.

A sharp tug on her collar brought her back. It seemed thatAshley still felt she was of some value even if Kelvin didn’t. She growled but didn’t take her eyes off Kelvin, willing him to acknowledge her. He stared passively, if uncomfortably, past.

Silence descended. A brief silence. A painful and hate-filled silence – at least on one-half of the plateau’s edge. And then, in one sudden burst, the silence, the hate, the unease was ripped apart.

None of them noticed it in time. They’d been too carelessly preoccupied. Certainly, Steph cursed herself for not being more careful. She cursed Martina too for not keeping up the nervous vigilance she had shown earlier. Each of them had allowed themselves to be sucked into the moment. Now the moment was being blown apart by the cave bear imposing itself upon them all. It had exploded down the slope and onto the plateau as if the ambush had been his to set all along and they were merely playing his game.

Steph turned her head in the direction of heavy, grunting breaths and thudding paws. Everything slowed down. She noticed the whole thing with a clarity that had been missing just two seconds before. Her primitive brain was forcing a rapid assessment of the situation, absorbing detail in the hope that something might save her. What could save her? Perhaps the shape coming from her right. Perhaps that could. It was certainly on a trajectory to meet the bear, but what was it?

Steph’s brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing as the shape crashed into the pumping back legs of the bear, another second later and it would have missed – it was Davey. He had launched himself in what could only be described as a shoulder-barge against the animal’s flank. What he hoped to achieve was hard to say. What was clear was the result. The bear’s back legs stumbled. Not a lot, but enough to slow it. For the briefest of moments, there was a mildly confused expression etched across its face. Its eyes widened and its focus fizzed quickly away fromSteph and the others and around to whatever had interrupted its intended trajectory.

The moment was all that Kelvin needed. Steph noticed movement on the left of her periphery. She turned to see Kelvin and Martina whipping down the hill. She knew she should follow. Ashley seemed rooted to the spot, his mouth half open as he took in the bear’s enormity. She should definitely run. But what about Davey?

In what seemed an intelligent move, Davey had allowed his momentum to carry him. He had crashed into the bear’s hind legs in a sort of half spin. This spin, along with running into a weight far greater than his own, sent him tumbling behind the bear. As the bear spun around to look over its left shoulder, Davey was already tumbling over the ground to its right. This allowed him a precious extra second to get to his feet before the bear got its bearings. Even so, it didn’t seem obvious to Steph how he’d escape. The whole move had been suicidal. Why do it?

Whatever little time Davey thought he had bought himself from the move evaporated as quickly as it had come. The bear launched itself at Davey, half-rearing up in sheer, explosive power. Then Davey did the next unexpected thing. In one desperate spring of flailing limbs, he leapt over the lip of the small plateau and down a particularly sharper part of the slope. He vanished from sight. The bear, again momentarily taken by surprise, roared after him. And just like that, the noises that had shattered the tautness of the moment, trailed off downhill.

Steph instinctively intended to follow the bear and Davey, but her legs remained rooted. She felt that she should do what she could to ensure he was OK. She owed him that. Her eyes flicked in the other direction. Ashley was still there. He was still seemingly transfixed, staring at where Davey and the bear had disappeared.

His mouth was the first thing to revive itself. “What thefucking hell just happened?”

His words seemed to break the leash that had held Steph. She turned to her right. She walked away at first, to her shame, in the opposite direction to Davey and the bear. After a few steps, she stepped it up to a light jog. Then she broke into an all-out run. She skidded down sections of the slope, leaping over tree roots. Her lungs burnt and the muscles in her legs cried for rest, but still, she ran.

She noticed a noise behind her. Something was following her. She allowed a quick glance over her shoulder. It was Ashley. He wasn’t chasing her exactly – it certainly didn’t seem that way – but he was definitely following her.

Steph didn’t stop running until she had burst from the trees that littered the slope and out onto the same open grassland she had witnessed the wolves kill a deer on days earlier. Her hands clasped her knees as she tried to force oxygen into her chest, sweat tickling her temples.

The heavy breathing behind her announced that Ashley had also blown his lungs. She turned her head. He turned his. They looked at each other.