Page 60 of No Place Left to Hide

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 theother 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 echoeythwack. 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. “Ihearyou.”

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 helooks back and forth, then moves thewrong 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.”

Twenty-One

Before

September 2nd

I turn on my heel and stalk away from the fire pit, toward the lockbox at the bottom of the stairs. Fury radiates off me in waves. I punch in the code and wrench the little door open, grabbing my dad’s boat keys off the hook inside.

“Your phone is in the house,” I yell over my shoulder. “Go get it yourself, you hateful bitch.”

I don’t have any patience left, and nothing good can come of me staying within a hundred feet of her, especially now that there’s no audience to keep us both in check. The last thing my dad needs is a late-night phone call asking him to come pick me up after assaulting some trespassing urchin.

The yard spins around me as I stalk toward the boat dock.

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