Page 41 of Stream & Scream
“You know, you’re not running away from me. You’re runningforme. Every step just drags you deeper into my hands.”
Then the woods spit out two idiots who never belonged in my hunt.
Sierra Valez. Contestant twelve. Twenty-two, five-six, ombre blonde-pink curls bouncing around her shoulders, brown eyes wide and fake lashes thick enough to cast shadows on her cheeks. Her mouth never stops moving. She shrieks the second she sees me, wrist-cam lifted high like she’s about to livestream a fucking meet-and-greet.
“Oh my god! You guys, look who I found—it’s The Hunter!”
She actually fucking poses. Lips puckered, peace sign raised.
And beside her, Chase Durant, contestant three. Twenty-one. Five-eleven. Dirty blond surfer-cut hair falling into his blue eyes, jaw cocky, grin wide. Forest frat boy. He angles his wrist-camfor the perfect shot, like he’s on a stage and the whole world’s waiting for him to crack the joke.
“Yo, this is gonna go viral, bro! Legendary! Say something cool, man. C’mon!”
They laugh. Both of them.
And that’s what snaps me.
The laugh.
Like Liv isn’t out there tearing herself apart for me, bleeding fear into the ground, giving me the purest high I’ve ever had while these two treat it like a fucking vlog.
“Say something cool?” I echo, voice low and guttural.
My pistol’s already raised.
Two shots. Crack. Crack.
Chase goes first. The smile rips clean off his face as the bullet punches straight through the center of his forehead. His blue eyes roll back as his body drops like a sack of meat, surfer-cut hair falling forward, already coated in blood. His feed cuts out mid-frame, lens splattered in red.
Sierra freezes, her lashes trembling with the sudden horror dawning too late. Mascara smears down her cheeks, and her lips part for the scream—one she will never finish. The bullet between her eyes snaps her head back, pink-blonde hair jerking around as she crumples, peace sign still half-raised before she collapses in a tangle of limbs.
They fall into the moss like dolls tossed aside.
No theatrics. No flourish. They didn’t earn it.
They weren’t part of the hunt.
She is.
I step over their bodies, yank Chase’s cam, and smash it into a tree until it explodes in shards. Sierra’s feed blinks red once more before I grind it into the dirt with my boot.
“Fucking influencers,” I mutter. “This isn’t your stage.”
Their blood pools black in night vision, but the forest swallows them whole. Erased, and fucking irrelevant.
My eyes are forward. Always forward.
She’s still out there. Still running.
I move faster, closing the gap. The ground dips, then rises, pulling me toward the ridge I know she’ll head for. She’s smart. She moves like someone who doesn’t belong here but refuses to die quietly.
She wants the money.
Which makes her perfect prey.
She doesn’t know it yet, but I’m the only one who decides how long she gets to breathe. The only one who chooses when she falls.
I hear her before I see her. The snap of twigs, the sharp curse under her breath. She’s slowing. Her body’s betraying her.
