Page 27

I all but ran, fearful that if we didn’t hurry, we would be too late when we got there.

“Slow down, Rae,” Ben huffed behind me. “You’ll sprain another ankle if you’re not careful. Or I will.”

I ignored him.

He shouldn’t have come if he doesn’t feel the same sense of urgency. I regretted the thought as soon as I had it. That’s not fair. He only came for me.

“Wait—Rae.”

I groaned, stopping for three seconds to turn around and snap, “What? We can’t wait, Ben. Someone could die—”

If my tone stung, he hid the pain well, letting my words roll off his broad shoulders like water. “Look at these tracks.”

“I’ve been staring at them for a half hour.” I scoffed irritatedly, but marched back to his side. “What? What’s so important?”

Ben pinched my chin, turning it down to direct my gaze at the spot of ground he’d honed in on. “There. The boot prints turn into...”

“Animal tracks,” I breathed.

Human one second, beast the next.

I shook my head and pulled away from Ben. “Fox got testy when I asked if they kept animals, so they must have some he didn’t want me to know about. They probably joined up here and—”

“But the animal tracks start right here. That’s not possible unless they dropped out of the trees. And where’d the boot prints go?” Ben rubbed his hands together, tremors rippling through his shoulders as his teeth took up a steady chatter. I forgot sometimes that he was a year younger than me and far more innocent. “I don’t like this, Rae. Maybe we should wait for the police to get here.”

I heaved an iron breath. Doing my best to be understanding. To remember not everyone could push through fear and pain the way I could. “Absolutely not. You can turn back if you want, but I have to keep going.”

“But why?” Ben readjusted the gun under his arm. “Rae, you barely know this guy.”

“So, I should just let him get dragged off and possibly killed?” I shot back. “Everyone deserves saving, and I saved him once before. It would be a waste if he went and died now.”

Ben’s jaw worked as he tried to clamp down on his chattering. Then he hit me with the worst assumption yet. “You’re not gonna find Everly this way.”

My hackles rose, and as I inhaled, I braced every inch of myself so I didn’t accidentally explode all over him. “What the hell do you know?”

With nothing else to say to him, I turned and carried on, pressing madly at the button on my phone screen to get rid of the low battery warning. My fingers were too numb for what I was doing, taking me a few tries until I cleared the message off the screen.

“Rae, come on. Wait!” Ben’s voice grew distant, for I didn’t give him a chance to change his mind and catch up. Plowing on, I ignored the warnings flashing on my screen and in my head.

My battery life wasn’t the only thing dropping. As the day crept closer to night and full dark, the temperature also dipped, inching closer to single digits by the minute. The only boon was that there wasn’t a biting wind to steal away every drop of heat my body had left. Just a hollow, lifeless chill.

I ran on anxiety and adrenaline as the frigid temperature kept my ankle numb like an ice pack all over my body. Maybe not practical long term, but it did the trick for the time being.

My light sputtered ahead on the trail, and I stopped only to check the battery life again. Seconds ago, it had been at ten percent, and now it was down to one percent.

“Damn it,” I hissed through numb lips as I shook my phone to somehow manifest more battery life. The cold wasn’t helping.

When it shut off entirely, darkness fell like a curtain. Thick and impenetrable. It was like I was at the bottom of a frozen ocean, and nothing sounded around me except for my own racing heart and ragged breaths. I couldn’t hear Ben anymore, and the thought he might have gone back twisted up my innards.

It wasn’t his fault. I didn’t have the right to be angry at him for not following me into this particular battle.

He could have at least left the gun though...

I closed my eyes, willing myself to take deep breaths before panic got the best of me. In doing so, I honed my other senses, scent being the first to catch something notable.

Something animal.

That musky, smoky scent I had noticed when I arrived on the property and had been in the woods with Fox lingered.