Chapter 7 Poe
POE
We didn’t move slowly like we usually did. We stalked through the tunnels instead, outpacing everyone but the Hawks, who ran like maniacs through the tunnels like they always did.
Fucking obnoxious assholes.
This time, we weren’t here to hunt. This wasn’t a game. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t about winning. It was about Maeve, about finding her and settling whatever had happened to make her leave without saying goodbye.
That was the part that had hurt the most: she’d left without saying goodbye.
And yeah, I’d known better than to expect that she felt anything for me. For us. I’d known better than to think she felt what I felt for her.
But damn… I hadn’t thought we’d meant nothing.
“Keep going?” Remy asked.
I looked at the ground, spotted the tracks from Maeve’s lug-soled boots.
“Yep.”
She’d run this time. I could tell that much from her footprints on the floor of the tunnel. They were deep, her toes making clear imprints in the dirt as she propelled herself forward.
I sniffed the air, hoping for strawberries, and came up empty.
“Think the others will stay away?” Remy asked as we approached one of the red lights hanging from the ceiling of the tunnel.
“If they know what’s good for them.” Bram’s voice was low and flat, the way it got when he was trying not to let the rage simmering in his blood boil over.
He was on murder setting and that was bad for everybody in his path.
“You should tell us what happened.” I was tired of stifling my own frustration.
Bram stepped out of the glow of the light and into the next stretch of darkness. “None of your fucking business.”
“It’s our business when your bullshit drives Maeve away.”
He flipped me off but didn’t say anything. Same as it ever was.
His lack of denial said everything I needed to know about his guilt. Remy had known it first, the second we’d read Maeve’s letter the day she’d left, but Bram had just stomped off without a word.
Our attempts at getting the truth since then hadn’t been any more successful, and I’d spent the last three weeks trying to meditate myself out of my anger toward Bram, my frustration at his lack of disclosure, and the urge to camp outside Maeve’s apartment, make her talk to me.
To us.
The only thing that had kept me from her was the knowledge that it wouldn’t be fair.
Even in the note I could tell Maeve had felt bad about leaving before her ninety days was up.
Whatever had happened between her and Bram had cut deep enough to make her cook for twenty-four hours straight and slip out like a thief.
I didn’t want her to think we were harassing her or that it was about our informal contract.
We’d moved past that with Maeve a long time ago.
We came to an intersection and I bent to inspect Maeve’s bootprints.
“That hers?” Remy asked, stepping right into the print I’d been inspecting.
“Outstanding,” I said. “Destroy every trace of her why don’t you?”
“Team effort,” Remy said.
I found another print and we followed deeper into the tunnels.
We’d been walking the tunnels for a while when we heard voices.
“Someone took the shortcut,” Remy said as we neared an intersection.
I didn’t blame him for sounding surprised. The tunnels were a labyrinthine maze, doubling back on each other in surprising ways, a product of the businesses aboveground that had evolved over the years.
Remy had gotten curious about it once and had ended up in the weeds of the town’s history, almost back to its founding by the Mercer family.
It had taken a month of research and reading for him to figure out that additional tunnels had been dug whenever new bars and clubs had opened up back in the day, all the better to ferry the alcohol that had become illegal under Prohibition.
The result was strange and impractical, like some of the old houses in and around town that had been haphazardly expanded over the years.
The voices — male — got louder as we came to the intersection, and a second later we ran into the Ghosts. Literally, since Remy misjudged the distance to the corner and shoulder checked the tunnel wall, bouncing him straight into the path of the three men wearing Scream masks.
The scrawny one snickered.
I glared at them. “He meant to do that.”
“Didn’t realize anyone else knew about that switchback,” Remy said, trying to recover.
The big flabby guy and the scrawny one were bare-chested, but the other guy wore a black T-shirt. They carried their knives in the pockets of their jeans instead of sheathed around their waists.
“If you’re going to play, play to win,” the guy in the T-shirt said.
They were the newest team, one Bram had only vetted a couple months before when the Michael Myers team of Halloween movie fame had dropped out.
I thought the one talking was Milo, but I couldn’t be sure with the masks.
“You didn’t waste any time,” I said.
We’d moved fast and they’d beaten us. Even with the switchback, they’d been hustling.
Bram narrowed his eyes behind his mask. “Looking for someone in particular?”
It was a test. He’d marked Maeve in the holding room as a clear signal to the other teams.
“One bitch is as good as the other,” one of the other Ghosts (Brock?) said.
Bram’s jaw twitched, and I saw his fists tighten at his side.
“Cool story, bro.” I started moving away from the Ghosts, willing Bram to follow my lead.
We weren’t here to start shit with the other teams. We were here to find Maeve.
Bram stared them down for a beat longer than I would have liked, and I knew he was battling the inner urge to beat the shit out of the other team.
To be fair, Bram was always battling the urge to beat the shit out of someone, but that urge was almost irresistible when it came to men who abused women, and shit-talking women, dehumanizing them, was an open door for far worse things.
We’d learned that from Maeve. From what had happened to her sister June.
My shoulders didn’t drop until Bram turned to follow me away from the Ghosts.
“Fucking dickheads.” His body was coiled, the urge to punch and beat and kick and hurt still roiling under his skin. “They’re out.”
“We can deal with them later,” Remy said.
Remy was right: now wasn’t the time. But unease sat in my gut like a stone.
I’d assumed the other teams would stay away from Maeve after Bram marked her. That his mark — our mark — would buy her safety for the next twenty-four hours.
Now I couldn’t help wondering if I was being naive, and I picked up my pace, my heart racing with the sudden need to find her and find her fast.
Before someone else did.