Page 151 of Dark Little Game

I don’t know what it is, yet, but my chest is tightening the more I hear her say, and the longer I watch her prod at the bonfire with her phone clutched in one hand.

She clearly thinks she’s alone.

And itistrue that no one else is currently at Luros House.

When I pull out my phone to text Hunter, my hands have started shaking. I tap out a quick message, suddenly afraid.

Briar never spent time in the UK, did she?

Nope. She said she’s never been there. I told her I lived in London, and she said she always wanted to visit.

Weird.

What’s up, king? Why do you ask about Briar?

As I start to tap out another message my hands fumble, and the phone slips from my hand.

It clatters down onto the sidewalk and the moment the noise cuts through the yard, I know it’s over.

Briar turns and sees me, and her eyes go wide for a moment, then narrow.

“Get him, and get here, now,” she says in the British accent to the person on the phone. “We have a problem here.”

I move to take off in a sprint, but I trip on a loose stone and lose my footing.

When I hit the ground my palms scrape the ground, a smear of blood streaking across the stone.

Briar has already made it over to me.

And she’s standing above me with a matte black pistol in her hand, pointed right at my head.

“Inside the house. With me.”

26

Hunter

Back then, I thought it was better to be hated than forgotten.

I’d kick and scream and bloody someone’s face before I’d ever let them forget me.

I’d see other kids’ mothers, picking them up from school, and wonder if my own mother even remembered I existed, most days.

The rules were easy.

Don’t rely on anyone.

Don’t expect anything from them. Then, they can’t hurt me.

They’ll never even be given a chance to forget me.

It was that simple.

Then a pretty boy went and fucked it all up.

When I realizeRayne isn’t going to show up, the feeling settles inside me like I was destined to feel this way all along.

I’m down at the end of the street, where Red Row dips into a forested path that leads down to a grassfield that looks over the town below, just far enough away from the college campus.