Page 119 of Hide And Seek

Jensen’s voice was closer this time.

“I’m coming for you, sweetheart. Ready or not…”

The words sent a cold spike straight down my spine, and a wrenching sob tore out of me before I could swallow it.Shit.Imight as well have strapped on a flashing neon sign to announce my exact location.

I pushed on anyway, crashing through undergrowth that snagged at my clothes and tore threads loose like the forest itself was trying to pull me apart. A branch whipped across my cheek, and I tasted copper where I’d bitten the inside of my mouth.

Keep going. Keep—

My foot caught on something, and the ground came up to meet me so fast I barely managed to throw out my hands to catch my fall. As my palms landed jarringly hard on dirt and pine needles, my knee hit something sharp. White-hot pain exploded up my leg.

For a few gasping seconds, I lay there, dazed.

Then Jensen’s voice came again, closer now. “You're not getting away from me…”

I forced myself up, ignoring the pain in my knee, and lurched forward.

My ponytail had come loose, and sweat-drenched strands of hair were plastered to my face. I could barely breathe. Barely see. But stopping meant dying.

A clearing appeared without warning; moonlight falling across a stretch of open ground. I almost sobbed with relief at the sight of it. Maybe I’d gone farther than I thought, and there’d be a track leading from the other side to someone’s property. Maybe even—

The rope took me before I registered it was there.

A loop snapped tight around my ankle, yanking me upward with brutal force. The world flipped, and pine needles and dirt rained down into my eyes as I swung wildly before coming to a stop, hanging upside down from a tree branch.

I tried to reach up and grab at the rope around my ankle, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the knot, but the angle was wrongand the tension was too great. On top of that, my own weight was working against me.

“No.” I said it out loud, uselessly. Blood was already rushing to my head. “No.”

I twisted and writhed, but nothing I did made the slightest bit of difference.

I was totally fucked.

Tears came then; ones that barely made a sound because I simply didn’t have the breath to sob. They fell upward from my perspective, dropping toward the ground below me as I dangled there.

The tree line was still. Silent. Until… it wasn’t any longer.

A masked man stepped out of the woods, moving with slow, deliberate confidence. His mask was white in the moonlight, eerily featureless, and a huge ax hung loosely from his right hand.

Oh my god.

Not Jensen.

Not any of the others.

The killer.

His ax blade caught the moonlight, and I instantly stopped crying. Not because the terror had passed, but because some primal part of my brain understood that crying wouldn’t do anything to help me now.

The man stopped walking, and his head tilted slightly, like he was studying me. Then he reached up and took the mask off.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the face beneath it, given my earlier suspicions, but the shock of recognition still hit me like a cold slap to the face.

Rhys.

Dark hair pushed back from his forehead. Square jaw. Those silvery eyes, catching the moonlight the same way the ax blade did. He was soaked in blood so dark it almost looked black.

He started walking toward me again. Slow. Steady. Ax swinging loose in his grip.