Page 20

Twenty

Now

My legs have barely cleared the guardrail when I discover the other side’s only open air. The ground slants down severely into the trees, and I let go of Jena to throw out my hands to slow my fall. My hands and tights tear open on rough bark and branches that snap as they slice the skin on my legs. The only thing that saves my arms is Dylan’s sweatshirt.

We slide a good forty feet before we stop in a pile of branches and leaves and random trash blown off the highway. I land hard on my knees, pain radiating up through my hips.

“Fuck,” I say, clutching my palms to my chest. I can feel bruises blooming all over my body.

I look around for Jena and spot her a few feet away, a little further down the slope than me. I seem to have been stopped by an upturned chunk of roots from a half-downed tree.

“Are you okay?” I ask, scrambling to my feet as best as I can.

She tries to stand, and I slip down to her. We help each other up.

“Yeah.” Her voice shakes.

Rocks and dirt tumble down the embankment from above. We both look up. Over the metal guardrail, a pink glowing face stares down at us, and I fight back a scream. It’s dark enough that he might not be able to see us down here, and I don’t want to help him find us.

“Go,” I whisper, nudging her away from the road. “Quick, before he sees us.”

She moves, but slowly, staggering ahead like she’s not really sure what she’s doing. I grab her elbow and turn her toward me, worried she hit her head and gave herself a concussion. My incredible velvet jumpsuit is more than a little dirty, and there’s mud streaked across her chin, but otherwise she looks okay physically. Except for her eyes. Her eyes don’t focus on my face. They look straight through me.

I shake her. “Jena.”

She wobbles but doesn’t focus. Her eyes tick all around.

More rocks tumble from the road and I glance up. The man in the skull mask has lifted a leg over the railing.

I give Jena a little shake until she blinks and meets my gaze. “Snap out of it! We have to run!”

Her eyes go big, then she nods and moves, this time a little faster than before.

Is she in shock? What is this?

We run around trees and through brush as fast as we can in the darkness, but we’re not very far ahead when I hear a giant crash behind us. He landed in the same place we did. He’s in the forest with us.

I let go of Jena to dodge a tree. We come together again on the other side. Branches and trees jut out in every direction and while they almost clobber my face a few times, I’m grateful they’ll also slow down Brandon.

I don’t know where we’re going, just away from him.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” Jena gasps. She starts to pull ahead of me. “This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening.”

Definitely in shock. I don’t bother responding. She doesn’t sound like she’s talking to me.

We break through a thicket and I almost hear it too late. Jena’s still zoned out, still running—straight for a river.

I reach out with both hands, grab a fistful of velvet, and yank her back. Her upper body teeters over the water before she falls back into me, safely on the shore. Water rages before us.

She stares at the white frothy river, and then at me. “Holy shit. I didn’t even see that.”

“I barely did.”

It might be the color of the weak moonlight, but she looks ready to pass out. “Thank you. God. That would have been bad.”

She’s not kidding. This water is moving so fast that we’d be swept away immediately. Which also means we can’t cross it. I grab her hand and tug her to the right, down the shore. “Come on, we have to find somewhere to hide.”

We race along the bank of the river, running as fast as we can in our flats, but I know we can’t stay on the shore very long. The trees cast the forest in almost pitch-blackness, but here by the river, the moonlight bathes us in enough light that he’ll spot us in seconds. Especially in my fucking disco ball skirt. If we’re still out here when he makes it to the river, we’re screwed.

I hear a sound in the trees close by. I dive back into the forest as quickly as I can, pulling a limp Jena behind me. Seriously, what the fuck is her problem? Why is she losing it now ? We’ve been in deep shit for almost an hour, and she saves her meltdown for when she should be in survival mode?

A massive tree lies across our path. It landed on another fallen tree, so the trunk is about four feet off the ground. I duck under it and pull Jena toward where a dinner table-sized mass of roots has peeled straight out of the ground. It created a hole in the dirt that’s guarded by roots, and I push Jena into it. She drops to her knees and puts her face in her hands and sobs.

I creep around the root system and peek over the top of the tree to get my bearings. The forest is trying to turn me around, but there are landmarks. I just need to focus.

The river is ahead and to the right. Three on the clock. Straight ahead, maybe five hundred feet, is about where we almost went into the water. That would mean the highway, and the police officer, is to my left. We ran a ways though, so she has to be a further distance, at around ten or eleven o’clock. To get back to our starting point would involve a mad dash through thick forest, then a climb up what must have been a forty-foot embankment. I look over my shoulder to the forest directly behind me. That must be parallel to the road too. Maybe that’s the answer: we climb here and run down the highway instead of through the trees.

Would he expect that?

Either way, we can’t stay here.

A branch snaps and I turn back toward the river. Something’s moving down the shore. I watch, holding my breath, and a pink glow comes around one of the trees. He’s standing by the water but he’s not close. If it wasn’t for that nightmare-inducing mask, I wouldn’t have seen him at all.

What an idiot. Way to pick the most conspicuous disguise ever.

I duck back down and crouch beside Jena. “Okay, I have a plan. We’re going to sneak around him and get up to the road. Are you with me?”

I wave my hand in front of her face, and her gaze locks onto mine with so much terror and intensity it freezes me in place. Her entire body is shaking.

“This isn’t supposed to happen,” she whispers again. Her voice is so quiet I can barely hear her.

“You’re okay. I promise,” I say, holding her hands. “We’re going to be fine. This is a lot of forest for one fuckwad to search alone. Someone’s going to come looking for the cop up there, and when they do, we’ll have all the help we need. Everything is going to be okay. I won’t let him get to you. I promise.”

“Brooke…” She bursts into tears.

I hug her fiercely. “It’s okay. We’re going to make it out of this. Besides, it’s wiry little Brandon Heck. If push comes to shove, we can totally take him. He’s not exactly a bodybuilder, and I have amazing nut aim. One punch and I’ll end his family line.”

Jena shakes her head vigorously. “No, this isn’t supposed to happen. Why is this happening?”

Panic radiates off her and fills this space beneath the tree until I can practically taste the fear in the air. It quickens my own heart rate. She’s so deep in her spiral there’s no way she’s moving from this spot. Any plan to get out of here needs to happen without Jena’s participation.

I squeeze her hands again. “I’m going to make sure you’re okay. I promise.”

I stand again and look up over the tree. The pink glow is closer, but still way down by the water. What’s he doing? Looking for tracks?

Oh shit. He’s listening for us.

I look toward where the road is—I think?—and back to the river. Maybe that’s the plan. Maybe I creep toward the road to get help, and if he goes anywhere near Jena and her tree hole, I can make some noise and lead him away. I have a head start. I’m much closer to the road than he is. I can probably get up the embankment before he can even reach the bottom.

That’ll keep him away from Jena.

No way am I letting another Heck ruin our lives. Not tonight.

I crouch back into the hole. “Okay, new plan. You stay here and don’t make a sound. I’m going to lead him away. With any luck, the cop’s radio isn’t fucked, and I can use that to call for help. If it’s messed up, I’ll grab my phone and run down the highway until I get service and call 911. He’ll follow me, and he’ll leave you behind. When we’re out of the forest, climb up to the road and wait for help. Okay?”

She nods, but I don’t know that she’s actually listening.

“Tell me. Tell me the plan.”

“You lead him away… I wait.”

Good enough. “Okay. We’ve got this.”

I move to stand but Jena grips my hand so tightly I have to squat back down.

“Brooke, I don’t understand what’s happening. This whole night…it wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Well, it’s a night we won’t forget, at least,” I say, trying to lighten the moment.

Her grip tightens. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t think any of this would happen. I’m s—”

Another branch snaps, this one much too close, and we both freeze. Silence follows. I’m going to have to look. I force her to let me go. She stares, wide-eyed, as I climb out of the hole.

I whisper, “Stay here.”

She nods and I peek up over the tree. He’s standing ten feet on the other side of it.

Shit.

I drop down to the ground and hold my breath. I can see his feet beneath the trunk. He doesn’t move. Neither do I. So much for that head start. How did he get so close without me hearing him? He was way down by the river.

I need him to move. My fingers dance across the ground, over mounds of mud, and across branches too big for me to move without making noise. Slimy leaves leave residue on my hands, and pine needles prick my skin before I finally find a rock. It unearths from the rain-softened ground with a little slurp and fits nicely in the palm of my hand. I peek over the tree to make sure the pink glow of the mask is facing the other direction, and then I hurl the rock toward the water.

It hits a tree and makes a loud echoey thwack . I drop back down. The feet shift toward the sound, but he doesn’t move right away.

Shit.

“Brooke,” he calls. That fucking robot voice is going to haunt my dreams. “I hear you.”

He lifts a foot and quickly walks in the direction of the rock’s impact. I don’t wait. There’s nowhere to hide over there, so he’ll quickly realize it was a distraction. When he’s a good thirty feet from the downed tree, I slip underneath it and tiptoe to the left, toward the road and away from him and Jena. Every step puts more distance between us, but my pulse is in my throat, and I can’t hear him over the beat of it in my ears. I keep looking over my shoulder to make sure he’s still following the decoy.

I catch the moment he figures it out. The fluorescent glow of the mask turns in my general direction when I’m about halfway to the embankment, but I don’t think he can see me in the dark because he looks back and forth, then moves the wrong way .

Not toward the river again.

Not toward me and the road.

But straight for Jena.

No. He has to change directions, or he’s going to stumble straight into her meltdown.

My hip slams into a waist-high boulder and I stifle a yelp. I slide my hand across the flat surface to make sure it’s clear and then pull myself up on top of it, immediately spotting a huge branch lying across the back. I pick it up as I stand. The sound of its leaves, still attached to it like dried flags, rattling against one another as they’re lifted off the ground is almost painfully loud.

The figure stops midstep and looks right at me.

“I’m over here, dirtbag.”