Page 6 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER FIVE

EDIE

have u eaten?

I stare down at Charlotte’s text, my hands shaking. No, I have not eaten. I brought my groceries home and put them away instead of hurling them out into the woods like I wanted, and I think that should count for something.

My phone dings again.

Charlotte

don’t make me call u

I sigh, slide the phone away, and cradle my head in my hands. I keep replaying the scene from the bakery in my head. The two redneck assholes sniggering in the corner, whispering where I can’t quite hear even though a lifetime of being an East Coast socialite’s fat daughter has primed me to know the signs. I keep hearing it, the word huge , over and over. I fucking hate that word. Scott always used it.

Those pictures of you when you were a kid—damn, you were huge, weren’t you? So much hotter now.

Should you be eating that? We don’t want you getting huge.

The fuck is that psychiatrist telling you? Doesn’t she care you’re getting huge?

My phone rings, cutting through my thoughts. Charlotte’s face is on the screen, made up with weird makeup from some art gallery opening or another. She uploaded the picture herself years ago.

I know damn well if I reject the call she’s just going to keep calling back. I answer with a sigh.

“You better be eating the best fucking meal of your life,” she says as soon as I answer, her photo replaced by the video chat of her sitting on her little patio, the wind blowing her hair into her face.

“Wow, not even a hello,” I say dryly. “And you know that kind of thing isn’t exactly helpful.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I know you didn’t eat. Why not?”

Of course she knows. Charlotte’s the reason I even went into recovery. I confessed to her one night, drunk on vodka and water, how miserable I was, how much I hated myself, how every day I yearned for food I was too terrified to eat. How I wanted to be like her—confident in a fat body.

The next day, she dragged me to see Dr. Valunzuela. I was still hungover from the night before, but Dr. Valunzuela in her tidy beige office used the word anorexia to describe everything I was going through, and it was like the whole world brightened.

It wasn’t normal, the hunger, the calorie counting, the obsession. It wasn’t healthy .

Of course, Scott didn’t agree.

“What’s going on?” Charlotte’s question jerks me out of my reverie. She chews on a boba tea straw. “It’s nearly three o’clock there. Why haven’t you eaten?”

I twist a loose lock of hair around my finger and stare at the blank TV across from where I sit on the couch. The curtains are pushed open, too, and I can see the thick woods that crowd around the camp.

“I forgot,” I say.

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Charlotte clucks beneath her breath. “Do I need to fly out there? What’s the closest airport?”

“You don’t need to fly out here,” I say, even though part of me wants her to. “You can’t . You know Scott’s probably watching you.”

“Fuck him,” she growls, but she doesn’t push it. Scott has the kind of money that means he can hire the kind of people who will notice if Charlotte hops on a plane to Virginia. The two of us have been over this a dozen times already. “Forget Scott,” she says. “What do you have to eat? Tell me there’s something.”

I cart the phone over to the kitchen and show her the groceries on the counter. “There you go.” I spin the phone back around and slump down at the table. “Something happened at the store. I—” I look past the phone and out through the windows. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to talk about it. But you need to eat something. I’m staying on the call with you ’til you do.”

I smile. I figured she would. We’ve been through this before.

“Edie? I’m about to order a pizza to your fucking cabin.”

“I don’t think anything’ll deliver out here.” I force myself off the chair and back into the kitchen. I worried, a little, that staying here would remind me of Camp Head Start, but everything looks so different, so polished, that it’s just not an issue. “But I’ll make some of this lentil soup I bought.”

“Then let’s hear that can opener.”

I prop Charlotte up on the coffee pot so she can watch me clanking around as I pull out a soup pan. The can opener’s manual, but I open the soup in front of the phone to satisfy her.

“Point me at the stove,” she says. “I want to see you cooking.”

“You’re the worst,” I tell her, but really I mean the opposite. She just laughs, her voice catching on the wind blowing through her apartment courtyard.

It takes about five minutes for the soup to heat up, for me to pour it into one of the pretty ceramic bowls and sit down at the little table next to the picture window. And honestly, with Charlotte on the phone? It’s not hard for me to eat. Not as hard as I expected, anyway. Once I smell the lentils and the cumin, the back of my throat waters, and I admit to myself just how hungry I am. I spent so long ignoring that sensation that I fall into the habit sometimes, even two years later.

I don’t think about the two assholes at the store. I don’t think about the store at all.

“So how’s the cabin?” Charlotte asks me when she’s satisfied I’m actually eating. “How’s that whole—” She waves her hands around. “Situation?”

I know she means being back at Camp Head Start. I answer honestly. “It’s fine. The dining hall’s gone. It looks—it just looks different.” I sip at my soup, trying to relish the flavor. “I even took the old hiking trail into town earlier.”

Charlotte knows about some of what I went through at Camp Head Start, pre-Sawyer Caldwell. The brutal runs where Blake would withhold water if I didn’t increase my time to his liking. The hour-long “death marches” through the forest—Gavin’s name for them, not mine. They were proud of it, how well they tortured me. All on 800 calories a day, per my mother’s instructions.

A kind of white spot appears behind my vision. I push out all thoughts of Camp Head Start. I don’t want to start thinking about Sawyer Caldwell.

“How was that?” Charlotte asks. “The walk?”

“Fine.” I don’t tell her how my skin prickled like someone was watching me. Then she probably would fly out here from California. And as much as I might like some company, I know that’s a dangerous idea. “I’m fine, really.”

I stir my soup around and take another bite. Now that I’ve started eating, it really isn’t so bad. It’s just that initial hurdle. It’s just fighting that bitch of a voice that still lurks in the back of my head.

“That’s good. I haven’t heard from Scott. You know that makes me nervous.”

I don’t say anything.

“It’s been, what, five days since you left? And he hasn’t even pretended to come around asking about you?”

“He knows you helped me.” The thought gives me a tight knot in my chest. Scott always hated Charlotte. Called her a “bad influence” on me, as if I’m a child. My starting recovery just cemented that, because Charlotte was the one who got me there and so Scott blamed her for my weight gain—the only aspect of my recovery he gave a shit about. “You need to be careful,” I add after taking another bite of soup.

“Scott’s not going to do shit to me,” Charlotte says, tossing her perfectly-teased brown hair over one shoulder. “He might have someone tailing me, though. I’m not sure. You know, to see if I can lead them to you?”

I frown, even though I had expected this. “Which is why you can’t come out here and check on me every time I’m late having lunch.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Charlotte stays on the line with me while I finish my meal, a holdover from when I first started recovery and something that always gives me a little comfort, having her there to cheerlead me even if I really don’t need it anymore. By the time we hang up, the encounter in Altarida feels small and insignificant. I’ve been through so much worse than rednecks heckling me in a cupcake shop.

With lunch finished and Charlotte back to whatever she’s doing in California, I collapse on the bed I chose for myself. I hadn’t let myself realize how fucking exhausted I am from all the travel of the last few days—buying a new car, driving cross- country at a breakneck pace, trying to get ahead of Scott well before he could realize what I’d done. He knows now. I’ve no doubt someone’s tailing Charlotte.

Still, I feel confident that they’ll never find me here. Scott will never expect me to come back to Camp Head Start, the site of the worst day of my life.

Second worst day of my life , I think groggily. Because the worst happened not even a week ago, when Scott slammed his fist into me and over, making me scream and bleed on his 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.

“Fat bitch!” he screamed, punctuating each hit, until the words just dissolved into meaningless syllables. Then he tightened his fingers around my throat until my vision blinked out.

I sink down into my bed here in the cabin. The mattress is cheaper and less comfortable than the mattress at Scott’s mansion. Not home. Not for me. Not anymore.

Somehow in all those dark thoughts, I fall asleep. I only knew this because I jerk awake later, and although the light is still on in my room, the windows are dark. Night’s fallen.

I sit up, groggy and bleary-eyed. I feel like something woke me up, jarred me out of the dreamless sleep that travel gets you. For a moment, I sit, listening. The cabin is quiet and still. Too cold for the AC, not cold enough for the heater. I don’t even have the fan going.

Then I hear it. A soft, distant thump.

All the sleepiness drains out of me. I fling myself off the bed and grab my phone and swipe it open. The clock says 8 PM, and there’s nothing else, no messages or phone calls. I’ve got Scott’s number blocked, of course, but that wouldn’t stop him if he really wanted to get ahold of me. There’s nothing from Charlotte, either. Or my parents, whom I’m sure have heard from Scott that I’ve gone missing.

I put it on silent and slip out of the bedroom, into the hallway. I listen for a moment .

Silence.

I take a deep breath. Remind myself that I’m in the mountains now, not the city, and the sounds are different. It could have been an animal. Nuts falling on the roof. A burst of wind?—

Someone knocks on the cabin’s front door.

That sound is unmistakable. Three sharp raps. I freeze, panic surging into my throat.

Scott. He’s found me.

I look at my phone, expecting to see it lighting up in my hand with some unknown number. But it’s dark and silent.

I scurry into the living room, grab my purse, slip on my shoes. If this is Scott or one of the PIs he’s almost certainly hired, then I need to run. I need to get in my car and drive until I know I’m not being followed. Then I can decide what to do next. Hire a lawyer. File a restraining order. Something.

I stare at the front door, my chest tight. I know I can’t do anything until I see who’s on the other side.

“Hello?” I call out, my voice trembling. I sidle up to the door and press my ear against the slick wood. It’s quiet. “Who’s there?”

No answer.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just the cabin host coming to check on me. Maybe there’s a problem with the cabin, and they need to let me know

Then why aren’t they answering?

“Hello?” I call out again, pulling my purse up against my body. I slowly unlatch the front door, body braced to run when someone pushes inside.

Nothing happens.

I breathe out, long and slow, and pull the door open. Every single nerve is burning.

No one’s there.

I blink out at the dirt-covered driveway, the boarded-up cabins. The woods beyond them, shrouded in silvery darkness. But I swore I heard knocking? —

Then I glance down.

Then I see it.

Blood on the cement porch, dark in the moonlight. And a severed head, the face twisted in a perpetual scream, the eyes wide with fear?—

Staring right at me.