Page 51

Now.

The word screams through my brain, louder than the thunder rolling overhead.

His back is to me. This is my only chance.

If I stay in this barn until he puts his clothes back on, he’ll lock me in here, or worse, finish what my friends and I started on the highway fifteen years ago.

I don’t hesitate. Not giving fear a second to breathe.

I slide my feet silently back through the damp straw, inching away from the wooden beam toward the dark, gaping threshold of the open barn doors.

The cool rain misting through the entrance hits the back of my neck like a blessing.

Step by step, keeping my weight on the balls of my feet, I retreat into the shadows.

Ten feet.

Eight feet.

Five feet.

I reach the edge of the wooden doorframe, ready to pivot and bolt into the pitch-black night.

“Don’t make me chase you, pretty girl…” Ryder’s voice cuts through the darkness.

He hasn’t turned around. He’s still standing by the fire, but his head is tilted slightly toward the rafters, his gravelly tone dripping with an evil promise that turns my blood to liquid ice.

“...because when I catch you, the punishment will make the devil weep.”

My breath locks tightly in my throat.

I swallow hard, the dry lump in my neck aching as I stare at his wide, tattooed back.

Every survival instinct I have screams at me to freeze, to obey, to walk back to the fire and surrender.

Fuck that.

I decide to risk it.

Ryder is still bare-chested, his jeans lying at his feet. He still needs to pull them on, to zip them up, to grab his boots. That gives me a ten-second head start—ten seconds to vanish into the rain, to lose him in the dense, overgrown woods bordering the property, and make it back to the highway.

I turn on my heel and make a desperate, frantic break for it.

I burst out of the barn and plunge straight into the blinding, black void of the storm.

The sky has completely collapsed, unleashing a punishing, torrential downpour that hits my face like needles and instantly soaks my sweater.

Lightning tears across the heavens, illuminating the muddy dirt lane and the wild, thrashing trees in a sharp, blinding flash of white.

My boots smash into the mud, spraying slick water everywhere as I sprint blindly through the dark, my lungs burning, my heart hammering a chaotic, terrifying rhythm.

I don’t look back. I dare not look back.

Behind me, rising above the roar of the thunder and the howling wind, comes the heavy, explosive crunch of a barn door being thrown wide open.

The hunt is on.

I’m running for my life into the black gut of the storm, pushing my body past its limits through the mud and the dark, with Death himself following close behind.