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27
Rock & Needle
Willow
If I ever hadany doubt Luca would make use of the tracker in my bracelet, I soon get clarification. Clearly, Luca doesn’t consider the use of the tracker cheating. He makes fast and devastating use of it.
Despite my twenty-minute head start, he’s on my trail less than forty minutes later. For a man with a fucked-up heart and a practitioner of the world’s more frivolous sport, he’s really fucking fast.
Luckily, the deeper into the forest I venture, the denser the trees grow. The trunks and the underbrush mask my presence like accomplices, like old friends trying to protect me, closing their shadowy embrace over me. I stay low along the ground, right in the mud where Luca thinks the rest of us great dirty poor live, and I stay in motion.
In the distance, Luca’s laughter reaches me in sinister echoes. I don’t hear his footsteps from where I am, but I do hear his voice when he calls out like a cartoon villain.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
The playful taunt is warped into a sinister parody by the repeated echoes. He doesn’t sound out of breath or annoyed, but so far he’s not yet managed to close in on me. Either the reception out here isn’t as good as it is closer to the house, or his tracker range isn’t specific enough.
No matter how close he gets, if it comes down to it, I’ll just have to make a run for the house. Luca might have the tracker, but I’m smaller and faster than he is. I’m used to running, and I wasn’t born with a hole in my heart. Even if he finds me—Luca will still struggle to catch me.
“What are you waiting for, fucker?” I call back. My voice carries through the dense foliage of the forest, scattered by the icy wind. He’ll hear me just like I heard him, in distorted echoes. “Come and get me already!”
Darting between trees and leaping over jutting roots, I spear through the woods. The forest floor is hard with frost beneath my feet, grounding me, and the winter air is sharp in my lungs. My blood is pulsing fast and hard in my veins, alight with the thrill of the hunt.
Not the thrill of being chased, but more the thrill of knowing how much Luca wants to catch me. Knowing it’s within my power to withhold something he wants and snatch the victory from his hands the same way he snatched the orgasm out of my body last night.
Branches whip past me, and leaves rustle underfoot as I dart and duck. The cracking of branches and the rustling of underbrush tells me Luca is hot on my trail, so I quicken my pace, heart pounding, skin tingling and hot despite the icy cold that makes my breath mist.
“Getting tired yet?” I call over my shoulder. He’s close enough to hear me, and I know his every sense is straining for any sound from me. “Your little feet hurting, baby Luca?”
“I’m about to collapse.” His voice rings out, a hint of excitement laced through his lie.
His excitement is not a good sign. We’ve been in the woods for over an hour—I would expect him to grow tired, bored or annoyed. But he’s none of those things, and not just because Luca Fletcher-Lowe is a borderline psychopath with an inability to feel normal human emotions.
He’s drawing closer. I can almostfeelhis presence behind me, now, urging me to run faster. The playfulness from earlier, the deeper we’ve gone into the woods, is taking on a sharper edge. The thrill in my veins turns to urgency. I pick up the pace, sprinting through the woods, heading downhill, branches whipping at my face and limbs. My injured leg is aching under my weight, but I ignore the pain.
I need to head back, beat him back to the house. But it won’t take him long to realise what I’m doing, thanks to that goddamn tracker.
I stumble on a rock, and stop for a split second. The rock at my feet is a pale hard shape in the bluish darkness. If I picked it up and wedged my arm against a tree, what are the chances I could smash the bracelet off?
Probably not great. But the tracker is the problem, and even if I got rid of the bracelet, there’s no guarantee Luca doesn’t have other ways of tracking me. I was out of it for several days when I had a fever; I wouldn’t put it past him to have a private doctor insert a chip in my neck or something equally sinister.
“You’re slowing down, Lynch!” Luca’s voice calls out through the trees, sing-song and grating. “Don’t make this easy for me now.”
Oh, I won’t. Time to attempt the run. Half on impulse, I pocket the rock and set off running once more.
The wood is disorienting, but since the house is in a valley, I make my way down, hurtling past trees and branches. I don’t sprint—I jog. A steady pace will get me further than a desperate run. I count my breaths as I go, trying to keep my heart rate as calm as possible.
Around me, the cold intensifies, hardening the ground below my feet. My breath is a milky ribbon streaming from my mouth as I run. The trees grow steadily sparser as the ground evens out. High above, a thin, brittle moon disappears behind clouds. Soon after, snowflakes begin to drift from the sky.
Glints of light appear in the distance. Daylight—refracted from the glass panes of windows. The house.
I bypass the archery field and the tennis courts and hop a wall into the topiary, hoping the carved shrubs will provide me cover. I crouch in a shadowy corner and I pause to listen.
All I hear is the wind.
All I can do is hope that Luca hasn’t caught up with me yet. The house is on the other side of the topiary, past a patio of stone. Last stretch. Time to run.
I streak through the topiary, and then I can see the french windows, waiting for me, and then I don’t even breathe. I just sprint. In my focus, I almost miss Luca, a dark figure like an arrow flashing through the snow. I turn at the last moment to avoid crashing into him, skidding across the frozen grass.
