Page 152 of Beautiful Prey

Another branch snaps farther to the left. At the same time, footsteps move through the trees to my right, followed by a man’s low voice speaking to someone else. I stop and listen, and every bit of pleasure drops out of me at once because that isn’t Jade.

I closed the preserve for tonight. No staff. No maintenance. Nobody wandering around after dark.

So who the fuck is it?

This was supposed to be mine. My hunt. My night. My husband.

Nobody gets in here without House access.

Which means...

“Fuck. Dad. Of fucking course.”

I drag the slate off my hip so fast it nearly slips out of my hand, and bring up the preserve grid.

The display resolves around me. Jade’s slate has no outside signal here, but it’s still talking to the local system. Three House-kit transponders are moving across the hillside in a widening line, with a fourth farther down by the vehicle track.

Opening the nearest sector camera, I find Jade curled beneath the roots of a fallen pine, bracken hanging over him. His body is pulled in so tightly I almost miss him. He’s trapped.

I switch on the field audio. Wind scratches through the feed for a second before his whisper reaches me.

“I’m saying it out loud, whatever the word is. We never picked one. You never gave me one...”

He thinks it’s me. He’s down there trying to safeword a man who never gave him a word to use, and rage hits so hard the edge of my vision blurs. I’m already moving before the slate is back on my hip, cutting uphill behind the line of men. Jade is waiting for someone he still thinks is coming.

Opening the preserve controls while I run, I find the west service gate I used after his head start still open behind me, then shut it.

Around us, the preserve seals itself, steel crashing across every access point, section after section, until the whole forest sounds like it’s locking. Then I kill the pads, the path markers, the beacons, the emergency lighting, and finally the grid.

The beautiful little world goes black. No lights, no markers, no open gates. Now they’re sealed inside it with me.

The first one’s standing on the path with his light on, turning in a slow circle and calling a name when I come out of the trees behind him and take his legs out from under him.

He hits the wet stone hard. I put a knee between his shoulder blades and wrench one arm up behind him until something in the joint gives, holding him there as he makes the noise. “Where is he?”

“I don’t... fuck.”

I pull again, making him choke on the rest.

“Down the cut! He went down the cut, he’s in the...”

“Thank you.” Putting his face in the path, I leave him there.

Another mistakes me for one of them. That’s what the visors buy me. Same black, same jacket, same faceless nothing. He’s close enough now that I can hear him breathing with his light down.

“Anything over on your side?”

“Not yet. Pretty boy hasn’t moved in a while.”

“Yeah, he’s gone quiet. Probably scared shitless. Vasco says we stay put.”

I’ve closed the distance by then. Stepping in before he realizes, I catch his wrist as one hand comes up and walk him backward into a trunk. I pin my forearm across his throat, keeping him there as he kicks. “Say that again.”

“What?”

“Vasco.”

His eyes lift to my visor, and something changes behind them. “Oh, Light...”