Page 2 of The Wolves Come at Night

“Oof.”

Carson went down, painfully scraping her shin on a rock. She landed hard, her breath leaving in a whoosh. Her glasses flew off, and she scrabbled in the leafy undergrowth to find them.

Jamming them back on her face, she took stock of her injuries. Her shin was scraped but not bleeding, though it would have a bruise. Her rump hurt. So did her wrist. Topical problems; her pride was more injured than anything. She looked up, expecting to see Izz doubled over with laughter at her accidental pratfall, but her roommate was standing stock-still five yards up the path as if she hadn’t seen a thing.

“What the hell, Izz?”

Izz hurried back to Carson. “Shh!”

“Why? What—”

Izz knelt and slapped a hand over Carson’s mouth.

“I hear someone,” Izz said quietly.

“Where? Up here? It’s probably just someone from the club. There’s probably some sort of celebration when you find your intention.”

“I don’t think it’s a party for us, Carson.”

Carson heard it now, too. Voices. A man and a woman. Raised in an argument. And getting louder.

“How could you do this to me? How could you ask this of me?” The woman’s voice was met by one rougher, deeper.

“Please, Georgia. Everything depends on you.”

“Don’t give me that. I don’t have a choice here. I don’t care if it ends things between us. I’m tired of all of it.”

A snarled reply, no more pleading, no more cajoling. “You will regret you ever said that to me.”

“We should go,” Carson whispered to Izz, who nodded and helped Carson to her feet.

The gunshot was loud, echoing through the trees, bracketed by the panicked flight of birds, rising into the air like a dark cloud. Carson thought it was a firework at first, an M-80 like her brothers used to set off in their neighbors’ trashcans. Her ears rang with sparkling echoes of the resonant boom. Her mind caught up, and her heart rate spiked. It wasn’t a firework.

A second shot, and a choked male scream followed. They heard shuffling, and branches breaking. Was he covering the body? No, it sounded like he was running away.

They had to get out of here, too.

“Go,” Carson whispered.

Izz, frozen again, shook her head, but Carson yanked at her arm. “Now. Go, now!”

She pushed her roommate, who stumbled before righting herself and running away down the path, bushes and branches crashing apart in her panicked wake. So noisy. Damn it, Izz, he can hear you.

Carson glanced back once before following, shocked to see a stranger pushing aside the branches of the oak tree at the apex of the hill. He was big, burly, and looking for something. Or someone. Them.

Heart stuttering, she burst into motion, following Izz down the mountain.

She’d seen his eyes, wild, searching. The glint of metal in his hand—a gun?

God, he’d just shot someone with that thing.

The question was, had he seen her?

They plummeted down the path, tripping and falling in their hurry, Carson looking over her shoulder, knowing, just knowing he was behind them, about to grab her ponytail and throw her to the ground... But he wasn’t there when she looked.

At the end of the trail, they hauled ass to the car and back to campus, not stopping until they were inside their room in Crawford House, inside the perceived safety of the school’s persistently watchful eyes. Still panting, eyes wild, Carson had bolted the door and heaved out a breath. Safe. For now.

Izz paced their room, hands on her slim hips, still catching her breath. A trickle of blood ran down her cheek; she’d caught a branch to the face toward the base of the hill.