Page 42 of Entangled

This is not helpful. We need to get her away from here, give her a moment. She needs to be eased from this panic she’s in, in a safe environment.

I sigh, then make my tone as gentle as possible as I turn to her. “I know this is impossible, but?—”

The womansnaps. She whirls on us, tears spilling from her eyes as she screeches. It’s rage-coated misery.

“I don’t know where your murderous whore is,” she hisses. “But I just hope you drag her back to where I can find her. I’ll make her choke on her own eyeballs for this.”

Jaykob freezes in his search.

“Try and threaten her again.” There’s a snarl in his voice that comes from some depthless hell. “Just try it.”

Dominic’s brows slam down over his eyes, then he looks back at the pot, the discarded bowls. The dead, distended bodies that lie still in their final convulsions. He stares back at the woman.

“Edendid this?” There’s no small amount of disbelief in his tone.

I feel the echo of it... as well as a rise of hope—and it’s dizzying, nauseating in its intensity. If Eden didthis, and she’s not here...

After all of this, could she actually be free?

The woman presses her hand to her forehead and keens, half in broken, blind anger, half in hysteria.

“I don’t know!” she shouts, and her voice is thick with tears. With loathing. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’tknow. She and Madison made it. It could have been Madison, I don’tknow.”

Dominic looks about ready to shake some answers out of her, but at the last, he freezes. “Madison?”

“That bitch,” she spits. She sniffs wetly and glares at us. “It doesn’t matter.” She lets out a bitter, small laugh that drops something heavy and cold in my gut. “It doesn’t. They’re both dead anyway.”

“Explain.” Dominic grabs the woman’s arm, and he’s lost any semblance of control. “Now.”

“God damn it!” Jaykob shouts. He pulls away from the tree he’s examining. “We have gunshots. A spray.”

“Shit,” Bentley mutters, coming up behind him to look at the holes.

“That was half an hour ago,” the woman whispers. “You can try to catch up...”

Dominic drops her arm and looks at me. He’s pale as a gravestone.

We both turn and start running to the trees, where Jaykob has already disappeared. Behind us, the woman’s voice lifts into a haunting, shadowing scream.

“But she’ll be dead before you find her.”

Chapter13

Eden

Survival tip #20

You have to be the worst version of yourself to survive.

Kill the weak.

Strike from the shadows.

Run from a fight.

Leave your friends behind.

I’m going to die.

---