Page 32 of God of War

“Not a kid,” she spits angrily. She clambers out of the tree trunk and wipes her hands on her jeans. “Why the fuck aren’t you dead? I heard shooting.”

“That was me.” I look down at the gun in my hand, then tuck it into the back of my jeans.

“Oh,” she says. I feel her brain whirring.

“He’s alive,” I tell her. “Didn’t even graze him.”

“Did you try?”

I ignore that. I have to. Did she cling to that hope, hiding out here? The hope that I would put a bullet between her father’s eyes? Is she disappointed in me?

I don’t like that feeling. It twists in my gut, like I’m ashamed of myself for letting her down.

“You got your bag?” I ask. But really I’m asking if she has the coke. It’s possibly the only leverage we have left.

“Yeah,” she replies after a moment, like she’s annoyed I didn’t answer her question and was thinking about pushing it. She turns and fishes something out of the tree stump. It’s the backpack. She brushes off the canvas and slings it over her shoulder. “What do we do now?” she asks.

“Now? We walk.”

***

It’s slow going. I don’t want to take out my phone and use the flashlight until I’m sure Jackson isn’t following. I don’t think he is. Guy like that wouldn’t stomp through the woods in the middle of the night if he can get someone else to do it for him. Finally I take out my phone and light our way.

Delaney is pale and her dark hair swings into her face with every step, her eyes cast firmly on the ground ahead of her.

“How did you know that would work?” she asks, like she knows I’m watching her. “Like… I’m assuming you weren’t trying to kill him.”

“Just figured I’d give you enough time to get away.”

“He could’ve shot you.”

I shrug and grunt. Not much else to say. It’s true. He could’ve. And then Delaney would have been out here alone. Probably would’ve served her right for starting this whole thing.

A dull rush of panic goes through me. Not at the thought of me dying — I’m resigned to the fact that a life with the Wastelanders isn’t always a long one — but at the thought of Delaney out here, lost in the woods, with her sack-of-shit father on her tail.

“He’s not used to people fighting back,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “Or challenging him. I think he expected me to just walk out the door. You took him by surprise.”

“Yeah, maybe. What I can’t figure out is how he found us in the first place.”

Delaney makes a little non-committal sound. A hmm that sets my teeth grinding. I swing an arm around and block her, pivoting so that I’m in front of her and she’s blinking up at me. The flashlight on my phone illuminates our feet, but it bounces up to carve eerie shadows across her face.

“Delaney?”

Her fingers fidget with the straps of her backpack.

“Do you know how he found us?”

“It’s dealt with.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What, the sick fuck put a tracking device in your arm or something?”

“Something like that,” she replies, her chin tilting down, hiding her face.

“I’m not fucking around.”

She sneers. “What, you want to search me? Pat me down? You already did that at your little clubhouse, remember?”

“Enough with the brat shit. How did he find us, Delaney?”

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