An evil ostrich was one thing but a CFO riding an ostrich was the thing of Fletcher’s nightmares.
Without someone to tether herself to, Deepti had gone fully rogue. Dirt smudged her polka-dot blouse, the hem torn, and her elbow-patched blazer had been tied around the waist of her knee-length skirt. No Prada loafers deserved to be slathered in mud like hers were.
Unfortunately, she had her briefcase hitched high, as if to bore the ostrich into submission with payroll, and Fletcher and Waylon were in her warpath.
They sprinted, shooting off through the brush, sandwiched between the ostrich and Deepti.
“Look who’s back,” the CFO snapped. “Get out of my way.”
“Okay, okay! We’re getting!” Fletcher called. Her fingers laced through Waylon’s, and she tugged him hard to the right.
The momentum threw them off-balance, sending them topplingdownward instead offorward. Their limbs tangled, so much that Fletcher couldn’t tell where her elbow ended and Waylon’s arm began. When her world stopped spinning, Fletcher looked down at Waylon where he sprawled across her belly.
Being around Waylon was proving to be a risk to her physical well-being. This much heart pounding, breath holding, stomach clenching couldn’t be good for a woman.
And it didn’t help that during their tumble, Deepti had managed to wrangle the ostrich and mount it. Now she charged toward them.
She rode sidesaddle. Of course. Deepti was a lady. She’d grown up near the city, her family members of the polo club. One arm wound around the ostrich’s neck, and the other snaked around her briefcase handle like a mallet, poised to pummel them to death.
“My two least favorite people,” she said. Then her eyebrows shifted. “Actually, second and third. My first least favorite is Raul’s wife.”
“Have you ever considered that maybe the problem is the person doing the cheating and not the person they’re cheating on?” Fletcher asked, breathless beneath Waylon’s body.
Deepti’s eyes narrowed. She wasalsocheating on her husband, so no, Fletcher suspected she had not considered that.
“Peck their eyes out,” Deepti stage-whispered into the bird’s ear. (Did birds evenhaveears?)
Waylon scrambled up first and hauled Fletcher up by the forearm. “Run now,” he said. “Plan later.”
Here, the grass was shorter, knee-high in some places and nothing but dirt in others, like the earth had alopecia. It made it easier for Fletcher to see the deranged look on Deepti’s face as she chased after them.
New rule: No more looking back.
Waylon’s strides were twice as long as hers, but he kept a firm grip on her arm. Every three or four steps, Fletcher wobbled, toes blistered from gripping the soles of her flats for dear life.
Ostriches ran faster than either of them. Deepti appeared to their right in a flash. Her heels dug into the ostrich’s sides, spurring it forward, but instead of rushing toward them, it hesitated with a squawk. Again, she kicked him. Her ostrich thrashed his neck, bucking Deepti off its back.
She lay there, unmoving, as the ostrich sent dust flying and beelined back toward the tallest grasses.
Deepti laughed, a hollow sound.
No, not Deepti.
Deepti was righting herself, a hand to her sore scalp, but she froze suddenly in her tracks. Waylon skidded to a stop, Fletcher following suit with an alarmed inhale.
Hyenas. Eight of them.
Whatever she thought hyenas looked like based offThe Lion King, she was wrong. These were spotted like cheetahs but twice as bulky. Fifty-five percent muscle fiber, forty-five percent sharp teeth, bared and ready to bite.
The CFO’s head swiveled between Fletcher and Waylon and the hyenas. Fear burned in her gaze. Her eyes flared with an unspoken question.Truce?As if thirty seconds ago, she hadn’t instructed her temperamental pet ostrich to blind them.
Deepti readily subscribed to the Denis Bertram School of Thought that Fletcher was overambitious and underqualified for a Lydell invite, but a clan of hyenas really evened the playing field. Hyenas didn’t care about corporate politics or the socioeconomic leverage Dyer used to pit everyone against one another. They weren’t here under the guise of promotions: They just wanted blood.
Eight pairs of eyes flashed at them, searching for the tastiest dinner.
Personally, Fletcher’s money was on Waylon. He had more muscle on him than Fletcher and Deepti combined—and Deepti kept a Peloton in her office.
Waylon laughed—one stiff, bemused huff. There was no time for truces. In the wild, everything moved at the speed of survival. (Especially less than twenty-four hours after being Tased.)
