Page 4 of Hunted

Because I’d already taken a flying leap and launched myself headlong into the chasm. With nothing but a single metal clip between my body and certain death, all I could do was pray the carabiner would hold whenever gravity and friction decided to team up again.

[ 2 ]

ADDIE

PARAMORE – EMERGENCY

Thank fuck for quality equipment.

The carabiner held firm, sliding me to a gradual rest roughly a quarter of the distance across the chasm.

Dawn was still a little way off, and the moon was hiding somewhere behind the blankets of rainclouds, leaving nothing but a festering pitch-black presence beneath the line.

“You better watch your back, Sinclair!” Seb yelled as he clipped his harness onto the line and approached the edge. “‘Cause I’m coming for you!”

Shit, time to go.

Unfortunately, keeping hold of a pair of gloves had been the last thing on my mind when teaching Bodie and Eric some manners. When I realised I’d dropped them in the scuffle, I resigned myself to hauling ass the remaining hundred-and-fifty metres across the wire bare-handed.

This was going to suck—and not in the fun way.

A quick glance confirmed that Sebastos—notably gloved and regrettably single-minded—was gaining on me. If I continued to sit here contemplating past fuck-ups, I’d be dead in the next ten minutes and well on my way to joining the Widow at the bottom of her ravine.

That was a fate neither of us—presumably—wanted to share.

I wrapped both hands around the rain-slickened cable and dragged myself forwards. All I had to do was get there quicker than Seb. The dude was solid, but that made him slow, and I’d definitely be able to outpace him and his cronies down the mountain, provided I got there first.

The rain pelted down harder as if the smell of resolve leaked out of my pores and the sky took it as a personal challenge. It lashed at my skin and made the cable nigh on impossible to grip. Every time I wrenched myself forward, my hands slipped inches back, cutting my progress in half but costing the same amount of energy. By the midway point, my shoulders were screaming for respite, and my palms were blistering agony. I had to stop and shake the pain away every couple of metres just to trick myself into thinking it felt better.

Risking a glance back at my murderous stalker, I full-body flinched. Seb was far too close for comfort and, of course, watching me like a hawk. He noticed the second my eyes grazed over him and grinned like the Cheshire fucking Cat.

“You’d better hurry up, princess. It would sure be a shame if your gear failed.”

“It would sure be a shame if your dick magically fell off,” I huffed under my breath.

With a renewed sense of dread leaching the warmth from my veins, I tugged harder on the slippery line. Choosing not to throw a leg over the line was a calculated risk and forced the carabiner to bear more weight for longer—but it made me just that little bit quicker, and seconds were the only currency that mattered out here.

Clips had been known to fail. Just ask Irina Novikov, who joined the Widow a few months ago, thanks to a failed harness system. There wasn’t even enough of her body left to recover, much less bury, after they’d scraped her off the rocks at the bottom.

I shook my head, trying to shake off the memory of watching her fall hundreds of metres to the ground—of watching her splat like a discarded water balloon.

I would not be another Irina Novikov.

Eighty more metres to go. You can do this, Addie.

As if cursed by the gods themselves, my left palm tore open a second later, coating the cable in blood as well as rain. I yelped, then cursed at the echo of Seb’s manic laughter bouncing back at me.

It was alarmingly close, and he’d catch me for sure if I stopped any longer.

Move your ass, bitch!

I fell into the same monotonous reach, grip, pull rhythm, doing my best to ignore the crescendo of pain in my left hand, keeping my eyes trained on that distant ledge instead. A ledge that was less and less distant with every tug of my aching hands.

Thump.

With fifty-odd metres left to go, I jolted hard. My left arm dropped dead, hanging limply in the air as I hissed a sucking breath through my teeth. It felt like I’d just copped the full force of a fist to my left shoulder, but how was that possible when Seb was still metres behind and no one else was in sight? Confused, I looked down at the offending limb, surprised to see the black leather-wrapped handle of a military-grade dagger glaring back at me.

“What the fuck?” I snarled through clenched teeth, subsequently drawing in another short breath when the pain of the blade finally hit. Like, six-out-of-ten, finally hit.