Page 18 of Split You Open

Wes stares at me, his brows furrowing. He opens his mouth, shuts it, opens it again and then closes it. He crosses his arms over his chest, stares, and then shakes his head.

“Alright, let me make sure I got this straight: there are a handful of men⁠—”

“There are five of them and ‘men’ is a stretch for these animals, but yeah.”

“—on this property, not the one you typically use to hunt on, and they’re now running for their lives and that’s what is setting off the cameras?”

I nod aggressively. “Yes! We can’t let them get to the road and call for help.”

While I’m pretty sure calling the police would be a bad idea on their part given each one of them were lured here under the false pretenses that I was a fourteen-year-old boy—I can’t risk it.

Wes reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Let’s deal with the ‘why now’, ‘why here’, and ‘what the hell you were thinking’ later,” he growls as his hand drops away from his face. The glare he shoots me speaks volumes on how mad he is. “Go open the shed, we’ll take the ATVs out.”

I gasp with delight. “Hell yeah! Let’s go kill these⁠—”

Wes catches me by the neckline of my shirt and yanks me toward him. Bearing down into my face he growls, “If Blair or Rhett call while we’re out in these woods and they need us and we can’t just drop everything, there will be six bodies laid to rest here. Got it?”

My stomach drops, and the blood drains from my face. Fuck, I was so worried about how quickly tonight went awry, I managed to distract myself from the root cause of my anxiety and fear.

I nod. “Right, sorry, Wes.”

He lets go of me to turn and head back inside the house. “Get the ATVs running, Santi. Oh, and rope. I’ll be out in a second.”

By the time I’ve rolled both ATVs out and have them running, Wes has rejoined me. He hands me a gun that I immediately shove into the waistband of my pants.

“Get your phone out,” he snarls. “We’re using the cameras to help us locate them faster.”

Right. This isn’t a typical Hunt. This is just a quick elimination round.

Shame cools the excitement in my veins as I pull my phone out and pull up the cameras.

“Closest one?” Wes asks as he pulls out his gun.

I point into the darkness. “That way. Only about three hundred yards out, hiding behind a boulder.”

Wes nods. “Let’s go.”

Climbing onto our ATVs, the two of us take off into the darkness.

The roar of our off-road vehicles is loud enough to spook the nearest asshole. As we approach, he jumps up from his hiding spot and attempts to take off. I struggle to get my gun unholstered. While I fumble with it, Wes lifts and aims his.

One shot. That’s all it takes to take the first pedophile down.

“Woohoo!” I whisper under my breath, too astonished to hide my awe.

“Next one, Santi,” Wes calls out as he gets off his ATV and ties the rope around the body of the grotesque asshole who once preyed on children.

Pulling out my phone, I check for the second pedophile. “Ah, that way—trying to climb a tree. Approximately five hundred or so yards out.”

Wes hoists the body onto the back of his ATV like a dead deer and ties him down. “Ready?”

I nod. Ready as I’ll ever be.

We turn our ATVs around and speed through the woods. As we give chase, my heart races. This isn’t like a normal game and while I’m not finding a thrill in it, there is a satisfaction in knowing that I’m the hunter under these conditions. I’m in charge of the fate of these men and while their future is short-lived, I’ve got the power.

Unlike the situation with Rhett and Blair.