Page 37 of Hunter or Hunted

I had been afraid all throughout my childhood. The last thing I ever wanted was for another helpless, defenseless creature to be afraid of me.

Tears burned across my eyes as I lifted the lid on the jar of treats from the counter. With a handful, I sat on the ground.

She came over, nose wiggling.

“Good girl.” I patted her big, pointy ears as she gobbled up the snacks in my hand. “No more yelling, okay? I promise.”

More like herself, she wagged her tail. Probably not because she understood what I said, but because I was sitting on the floor. That meant playtime. She ran to her bin by the couch, came back with a stuffed skunk, and we spent the next few minutes in a rigorous game of tug-of-war. I let her win. She deserved to win.

When we finished, she went to the door and barked. I took her outside and sat on the steps while she did her business.

The cabin stayed quiet while I got Honey her dinner, ate mine, and cleaned up the dishes. When the sun set, I returned to Gwen’s bedroom.

But it wasn’t so quiet.

Gwen lay beneath the blankets, facing me. With them bundled so close to her face, I couldn’t make out her expression nor the words that left her lips, but I had an idea of what they were. She shook her head periodically, breaths closer to moans than language.

She was having a nightmare.

She had been right earlier. I didn’t understand. Not all of it, not every detail, not the ways in which her trauma affected her still to this day.

But I understood the nightmares.

I sat beside her in the bed. Carefully, I reached out for her cheek. Half expected her to jolt at my touch, maybe throw a swing or two.

Instead, her crinkled brows softened, and those groaning words silenced.

When I lay down beside her and tucked an arm around her waist, her expression stayed just as calm, and her lips smoothed to a straight line, clenched teeth finally relaxing.

After everything that had happened, I didn’t know exactly where we stood. I didn’t know what came next. But the boogeyman went away when I held her, and I had no plans of letting go.

12

EDWARDS

Something didn’t add up.

It was like an AI picture, almost too perfect. Everything was accounted for. Everything looked exactly as it should.

Except for one thing.

Edwards stared down at the photos on the desk, head in his hand. His brain throbbed from the furrow of his brow, pain pulsing from the center of his neck down his traps and through his shoulders. Sandpaper lined the backs of his eyelids. No amount of blinking could ease the aching dryness.

His eyes had been glued to these photos for at least an hour. Maybe longer. He had spread them across the old mahogany desk just after her death, and he hadn’t moved them since.

Because something didn’t add up.

In the far left corner lay the photo of Delilah. Hanging. He didn’t look at that one often. Her blue face, the snow gathering on her hair, the crystals of ice dangling off her pink fingernails⁠—

Edwards just couldn’t bring himself to look at that for very long.

Besides, he didn’t have that feeling when he looked at the photo of her hanging. His stomach hurt, his eyes burned, his chest tightened, but he’d realized instantly what didn’t add up about that photo. The shoes. The moment he saw it—the moment he saw her hanging there—he had questioned the shoes.

The other photos, ones of her footsteps in the snow, of the path from the road to the tree, looked right. It was only about a twenty-foot run from the site of the vehicle to her hanging body. A short pathway. Snow-dusted trees. Snow-dusted bushes. No blood. No other footsteps.

Just big footprints, from big shoes. Delilah was only five-two. But the shoes were a men’s size ten.

Why?