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So they waited.
Silver waited.
The sun crept into the sky and fed warmth into the woods, narrowing shadows between the trees. Tension slid through the leaves and choked Hunter, until he was ready to shoot Michael, just to escape it. His shoulders began to ache from being pinned so long.
It felt like hours.
It probably was hours.
She was alone out there. Probably in pain.
Hang on, he thought. Just hang on.
Finally a cell phone rang, out there in the woods. Silver’s. He answered, but his voice was too low to carry.
Hunter caught the word terminated.
He couldn’t breathe again.
But Kate could be faking. Waiting Silver out, too. Like Casper had been waiting at the house.
The conversation was short. Silver slipped the phone into a pocket and strode out of the woods.
Michael still didn’t let Hunter go.
“Wait,” Michael said. “I want to wait until I feel a vehicle leaving.”
Finally—finally—Michael released him.
Hunter swung around and hit him. As hard as he could.
Then he was scrabbling through the underbrush, stumbling once he found his feet, slipping out of his shoes in the mud. His breath was hitching again.
When he saw Kate, it was like his brain didn’t want to process all of it. He saw her shoes, the borrowed jeans, again splattered with blood.
The pink shirt.
The bloodstains. The arrows. The flies, already collecting.
Then he saw her head and wished he hadn’t seen any of it.
She hadn’t been waiting. She hadn’t been in pain.
He wanted to touch her and he didn’t.
He was going to be sick.
Michael caught him and jerked him back. “Don’t,” he said. “You can’t touch her. You can’t have this traced back to you.”
Hunter shoved him in the chest, throwing all his strength into it. His voice was raw and edged with pain. “You made me wait! We could have saved her.”
“No, Hunter—”
He hit him again. “We could have—she’s—”
“It was too late. He’d stabbed her through the chest. Hunter, it was too late.”
“Damn you!” Another shove. “We could have—she’s—she’s—”
