Page 111 of Hunter or Hunted

“Maybe if you tell me the truth, I won’t,” Gwen said. “But I need every detail, Evan. I need to know exactly what you did to my friend before we can even consider letting you go. Can you do that? Can you tell me what happened?”

“Is that what this is?” He looked between Gwen and me, sobs ceasing. Red streaked his pathetic, pleading eyes. “You’re recording this, to show the police. That’s what this is, right? I tell you the truth, and you turn me over to them, and I spend the rest of my life in prison?”

We would still have our ski masks on if that were the plan.

“Exactly,” Gwen said. “Now, tell us what happened.”

37

DELILAH

Ishouldn’t do this, she thought.

Sitting in the old wooden chair before the computer desk, Delilah stared at the Facebook login screen. The other windows open in the upper left said things like Anatomy 101 and Childhood Development.

She had come to the Black Pines library for one reason, and one reason only. Study. Familiarize herself with the curriculum she would start after the holiday. Read the intro packets, remind herself of ninth-grade biology. All things she would need to know heading into her first semester of college.

Then she finished reading over the introduction packets, and she had a list of everything she needed to get from the store to properly complete her assignments. Highlighters and sticky tabs and sticky notes and an external keyboard, maybe an external mouse, and, if she really wanted to go all out, one of those cool little stands to mount it all so she could feel professional and smart while she completed her online courses in her studio apartment.

She finished all that, and the thought hit her.

What’s everyone up to? What’s going on back home? How’s Ava?

She and her little sister had never been close. Delilah couldn’t put her finger on why. The fact that, from childhood, her parents had pegged them to their personalities? Delilah was the cute, silly one. Ava was the smart, levelheaded one.

They sat beside each other at meals, they fought about the clothes they took from one another’s closets, but Delilah always figured their friendship would develop in adulthood. Their home life could have been worse, but it could’ve been better. Maybe when they both got away from it, that would change.

Rhiannon hadn’t forbidden them from accessing their old social media. She just said that if you wanted to keep tabs on your old friends and family, not to do it from the ranch where it could be traced back to all the women who had tried so hard to get away.

Delilah respected that rule. It limited the temptation most of the time.

But now she sat in the library, away from the ranch, and that Facebook login screen stared back at her.

She only wanted to cure the curiosity. What would it hurt?

But God, did it hurt.

She logged in. She immediately went to settings to disable her location, and then she scrolled.

At first, it was just the usual. Friends at football games, friends home for the holidays—all of which she expected. Not much had changed. She had hundreds of messages, which she also expected, but that wasn’t why she was here. She just wanted to see.

An old friend, Chloe, shared a cluster of photos from the high school team’s last game. Chloe had graduated alongside Delilah in the summer, but she still went to the games because her younger brother had played since middle school. Delilah flipped through the photos, watching her old friends live out their simple, small-time lives, when her heart jumped into her throat.

Eight photos down, there he was. Evan. Profile view, always Delilah’s favorite, although the thought of it now made her stomach clench. That image alone—him laughing with a beer in his hand, lights down low, smiling at someone—would’ve made her sick no matter who stood before him.

But who stood before him was what had her hands shaking, her stomach turning, and terror gripping hold of her lungs. Unable to breathe, hardly able to think, she stared at that photo a moment longer. Hopeful that she was hallucinating. Because that would’ve been better.

But no amount of blinking changed the image on the screen.

Ava.

Ava stood mere inches from his chest. One of her hands wrapped around his shirt like she was tugging him into her. He towered over her, and she stood with eyes so big, so wide, like a baby deer. Entranced by his beauty. His maturity. His muscles. His strength.

All the same things that had entranced Delilah once.

Of course, Evan and Ava knew one another. They had all grown up as friends.

Delilah recognized that look on her little sister’s face because she had seen it in the mirror a thousand times. She was falling for him. Ava was falling for Evan, and Delilah couldn’t let that happen.