Page 62 of No Place Left to Hide

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I turn and scramble up the hill toward the road. My flats slip and slide through rotten leaves and slimy pine needles. Mud comes away in clumps under my hands as I claw my way up a few feet at a time.

I hear him tearing through the branches at the bottom of the hill and my adrenaline spikes. I glance over my shoulder as a dark figure at the bottom of the hill starts to climb. I scramble forward as fast as I can, but the embankment steepens. I’m starting to slow down. If I keep going straight up there’s no doubt about it—he’ll catch me. I have no choice but to angle to the right so I’m moving away and up at the same time, even if it takes longer to get up to the road again.

It’s so easy to be full of bravado about taking on wiry Brandon Heck when I have Jena beside me. Things are a lot less scary when it’s two on one. Alone in the dark when I can’t see him anymore? Absolutely not.

I can’t let him catch me.

I run parallel to the road, trying to take one step up the hill with every stride. A break in the trees illuminates a less severe incline between me and the road. If I can make it over there, I might be able to sprint straight up.

My foot comes down on a rock, and my next step lands in water. I pitch forward, and land face-first in a stream that’s been diverted under the highway by a thick caged pipe. Frigid water gushes out of the pipe and down the embankment.

Before I can get back up, I’m swept down the hill. I twist around,gasping for air as the cold knocks the wind out of me. I can’t stop myself. The water has too much force behind it. I slam into rocks as I tumble all the way down the hill until I’m almost at the forest floor again and the water slows enough for me to plant my feet.

My body throbs everywhere, but I ignore it and use a tree branch to crawl to dry land again. The river rages behind me, and when I look back up the stream, Brandon is silhouetted in the moonlight beside the road.

Neither of us move. His mask light is still off. His face is all shadow, but I get the overwhelming feeling that he’s waiting for me to make a move so he can match it. A moment later, he starts down the hill and my stomach coils into a knot.

“Quite a fall there, Brooke. Are you okay?” The mechanical voice grates on what’s left of my nerves.

I don’t take my eyes off him. I won’t risk losing him in the forest again.

“Now you care if I’m okay?” I shout back.

“I never wanted to hurt you. Confess and this stops.”

My throat closes up. “I didn’t do anything!”

His robo-laugh is otherworldly. “You, are aliar.”

I keep backing away, closer to the river. I don’t know what to do. He’s between me and the road. I can’t run to the left or I risk leading him to Jena—god, I hope she made it to the road and isn’t still crouched by that tree. I don’t know what’s to the right, further up the river, but I’d have to cross that stream to find out. Behind me is a white-water river that I have no hope of crossing.

I have to figure out a way to get past him.

My ripped tights are saturated with icy water. My skirt is bunched a few inches too high and caked with mud. Dylan’s sweatshirt is plasteredto my skin and now weighs about twenty pounds. Water drips from my hair and down the back of my neck. I feel the chill of it to my marrow, and my teeth chatter so hard I might chip them, but I keep backing away, never taking my eyes off him as he closes the distance between us.

The back of my head bumps into something, and I duck under it. When I stand up on the other side, I see it’s a branch about neck high that would have clotheslined me had I been running through the trees.

I look from Brandon’s silhouette to the branch and gauge the distance, an idea forming. I grip the end where it droops toward the ground and peel it back as hard as I can and as far as it’ll bend without snapping, trying my best to stand parallel with the tree it’s attached to for cover. The branch protests and I almost lose my grip too soon. I lean back and grit my teeth, praying I time this right.

I hear footsteps only a second before he barrels around the other side of the tree. I let the branch go. It hits his chest with a hollowthwackand carries him straight off his feet. He slams into the ground beside the stream in a pile of rocks with a sharp groan and curls into the fetal position.

I sprint past him, kicking dirt into his face as I pass. “Sucks to suck,” I spit.

And then I’m gone.

I run full speed up the side of the stream with the wind turning all the water on my body to arctic temperatures. But I don’t stop. There are far fewer trees here than where I last climbed, and I’m halfway up the incline in no time. The rocks help me get purchase, and before long, the guardrail looms above my head. I’m almost there.

My mind conjures images of Brandon, splayed out on the forest floor, and I almost smile. I hope he broke something. I hope he’s clutching snapped ribs, or a broken tailbone or something that’ll make upfor him being such a cockroach of a human being and scaring the shit out of me.

Out of Jena.

I get to the highway and look for her, but I’m too far down the road and there’s a slight bend to it here. I don’t even see the cars. I think they’re just past the turn.

Looking back is a bad idea, I know it is, but I check over my shoulder one last time to make sure he’s not somehow right behind me. Besides the water rushing down the hill from the culvert, the forest is scarily silent.

God, I didn’t kill him, did I? That’s all I need.

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