Page 73 of Playing By Their Rules

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Maisie

Something rustles in the grasses nearby. My eyes shoot open. There’s no disorientation—I don’t have to think for a moment, wondering why I’m lying on the side of a lonely road, covered in grass. I know exactly why I’m here and what I’m afraid of.

The grasses rustle again. Is it a bear? Some other kind of predator? Did Mina wake up and come after me? I don’t know how I’ll wrangle her back to the cabin, or if I should just make a run for it despite my injured leg.

Whoever or whatever it is moves again. My pulse thuds so loud in my ears, it’s deafening.

But over that pounding pulse, I hear a male voice.

“Maisie? Maisie! Where are you?”

It sounds like Chance. I shove the grasses from my body and struggle to stand.

“Hello?” My voice comes out dry and raspy as the grasses I’d used for cover. I cough and try again. “Hello? Chance?”

“Maisie!”

I whirl around, trying to pinpoint where his voice is coming from. A bright glow fills the space between trees. “Chance?”

“Maisie, it’s me, I’m here.”

I want to sob with relief. I don’t know how it’s even possible. I didn’t even dare hope for such a thing as Chance showing up in the middle of nowhere to find me and bring me home. But it’s him. Here. For me.

He lowers the light to the ground and comes forward. I limp to meet him and then finally, finally, his arms are around me.

I sag against him, gripping his shirt in my fists, afraid to let go.

“I got you, I got you,” he repeats.

My eyes sting with tears, but I blink them away. “How? How are you even here? Where’s Ethan?”

“He’s up the road a little ways, searching. We found your old foster home, or what’s left of it, and we’ve been widening our search around that.” Chance pulls back slightly to take his phone from his pocket, but frowns and says, “Still no service. But Ethan will loop around this way in a minute.”

“Did you find Mina?”

Voice grim, he says, “Not yet.”

“I left her at the cabin, have you been there?” I can only imagine what she must be thinking, if she’s woken up. Is she panicking that I’m gone? Is someone else there, helping her? I hate the thought of her alone.

“No,” he says, “we never found the cabin.”

“Chance, she’s…she’s having a psychotic break, I think. She’s not acting like herself, and she might be kind of obsessed with me.” It feels weird to say it out loud. I still can’t believe it.

He nods. “I know, baby girl. We saw her bedroom. It’s exactly like yours, everything in it and how it’s arranged. It’s not our place to diagnose her, but we’re very worried about both you and her.”

“Can we bring her back to town and get her help?”

He nods. “Of course.”

Rolling my lips between my teeth, I think for a long moment. Mina has done more than keep me here when I wanted to leave. There’s the car accident with her foster father before Percy…and then the fire Percy died in. A fire that I believe Mina started.

“There’s something else,” he says, touching my chin gently. “What is it?”

There are more rustling sounds in the darkness, and beams of light approach from down the road. Chance turns on his phone’s light as a beacon and calls out, “We’re over here.”

Two men walk forward. One of them speaks into what looks like a walkie-talkie. And the other—Ethan. I want to run to him, but Chance doesn’t let me go so I have to wait. Probably for the best because I can’t run, anyway.

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