17
I swiped for Lev’s number, but it went straight to voicemail, like his phone was switched off, so I left a message, “Bro, do you have the spare key for the basement?” I kept my tone even, so he didn’t grow suspicious because I wasn’t clear on what the fuck was going on.
Ez filled me in that Lev knew Adina was in the basement, and he was fairly sure he had the spare key, so he could work on the bikes whenever he liked.
“Did he screw us over?” I asked Ezrah as I paced back and forth, fucking seething.
“Bro, what the fuck,” Ezrah yelled at me, “he saved you from getting in trouble. You shouldn’t have shoved her down there in the fucking place.”
I barely heard him because I was too fucking angry, relieved, but angry. “Should we head down to Morgana? That’s probably where he’s taken her.”
“Just wait until he calls back,” Ezrah hissed at me so our roommates couldn’t hear.
There was a flash of light coming up from the forest-covered hill that rose behind the Lud, and we braced ourselves for someone to appear.
A whistle cut through the night sky, and Ezrah whistled back as we stood in the dark, gazing up at the hill, waiting for a response to see if the whistler was friendly.
“Lev,” Ezrah said quietly as crashing steps through the foliage, until the flashlight blinded our vision as a figure jumped down onto the flat lawn.
“You fuckers were almost screwed,” Lev exclaimed, lowering the flashlight. “Luckily, I came along at the right time.”
“Where’s…” I was about to ask, then analyzed our environment to ensure we were completely alone before I continued, “The girl?”
“I lost her,” he said unconcerned, “but she won’t get far.”
“Will she survive the night?” I asked him.
“If she’s smart, she’ll follow the streetlights and find her way back down again,” he explained.
“What happened?” Ezrah asked him, keeping his tone low.
“I just came back from the maze, keen to poke fun at the snarling bear since she was caged here, but then I saw the cop cars and snuck her out, led her into the bush where we lay low until waiting for the cops to leave, but then she slipped my grasp and took off,” Lev explained.
“I didn’t want to flick the flashlight on in case I grabbed the attention of the cops, but… so what happened in the end?”
I couldn’t be angry with him because he saved our skin, but it created a new dynamic. “They searched the house and found nothing, then searched the basement, and to our surprise, it was empty. She said a friend called the police, so I should’ve believed her.”
We fell silent with our gazes fixed on the horizon, where only a streak of orange light as the sun fell behind the mountains. I glanced back at the balcony to find that we had an audience, our roommates curious to know what the fuss was about.
“What are you thinking, Sick?” Ez asked me as I turned back to head back into the house, as he could tell something was on my mind.
“I’m getting some gear,” I told him as I returned to the house and ran upstairs to my room, as Ez followed, while Lev wandered into the kitchen to look for some food.
“What for?” Ez seemed concerned as if he could read the evil plaguing my mind. “Are you going out to find her?”
I shot him a sly smirk, “No, I’m going out to hunt her down.”
“Bro,” he freaked out when I took Adina’s confiscated gun from my hiding place behind the chest of drawers, checked the safety cap was on before sliding it into the waistband of my jeans, grabbed a flashlight from under my bed, put on my hiking boots, followed by a heavyweight flannel shirt.
Opened my top drawer where I kept my protein and trail bars and stuffed my pockets, planning to stay the night in the bush until I’ve caught my prey. “You can’t be serious?”
“Perfectly serious,” I told him as the images of her teasing me as she was getting railed by him were on rotation in my mind. It pissed me off as much as it titillated my senses. “I always wanted a prize head on my wall.”
“Sickle, fuck,” he followed me as I left my room and strode down the hall to the stairs. Lev was down the bottom of the stairs, and once he noticed that I was fully kitted out in my hunting gear with a worried Ezrah at my heels, he frowned, “Are you going in?”
“Yep,” I told him. “You coming?” Lev was good in the bush and knew the area well.
“Yeah,” he shrugged, then looked past my shoulder to Ezrah and seemed confused by my younger brother’s panic.
“Wait,” Ez stalled, standing at the top of the stairs, “I’m coming with you.”
“Hurry up, then,” I yelled back at him as I kept walking toward the door with one thing on my mind. I wanted to hunt down the girl who teased me in the library, and once I found her, well…I’ll decide what I do then.
I stood at the foot of the rise, shone the flashlight into the thicket, and listened for cracking twigs and rustling leaves. Music was thumping down the road at a sorority house, and an owl was hooting, and I had the impression that she was watching me, but I couldn’t see her.
“What are you thinking?” Lev asked as he flicked his flashlight on.
“I think we should split up and go three different directions,” I suggested as Ezrah stepped out from the Lud, wearing his hunting boots with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Alright, I’ll head down toward the lake,” he proposed, just as a distant scream belted out from within the forest.
“Hear that?” I asked them.
“Yeah,” Lev said, pointing his flashlight to the left, “it came from that direction.”
“Let’s go,” I said, walking up the rise as the boys followed, and we were jogging up the rise in the direction that the scream came from.
We’d stop every few feet to listen for sound, then scan the surrounding trees with our flashlights.
The problem was that she didn’t want to be caught, so we had to check behind trees and bushes.
I pursed my lips, then whistled a twitter-type bird tune, then listened for sound.
Most people unfamiliar with this forest would gauge their direction by the rise and fall of the landscape and the view of the campus to map their path back home.
Hopefully, she wasn’t smart enough to do that and, out of fear, would run further up the mountain away from us and get lost. There would be a point when she’d lose her footing and injure herself, or she’d grow exhausted and need to rest. Either way, I’ll find her.
There was another squeal, then the breaking of a branch, which sounded like she slipped over and grabbed a branch to stop herself from falling.
“Little wabbit,” I called as Ez cracked up laughing. “Little waaabbit.”
“Run, rabbit, run,” Ezrah added.
“You’re fucking nuts,” Lev hissed, then began yapping like a lapdog, which was his signature crazy sound that would make sane people run in the opposite direction. But Lev was not the only insane man in this forest right now.
I shone the flashlight in the direction of the noise, and caught movement quickly hiding behind a tree trunk.
“I’m giving you a head start, wabbit,” my booming voice echoed into the thicket, and I tilted my head searching for sound, breath, footsteps, anything. “You hear me?”
Still no response.
“I’m going to be kind to you because I’m a nice guy like that,” I shouted, and that time, there was a fear-based moan.
Music to my ears. We got her. “I’m gonna give you time to catch your breath, say,” I looked at the time on my phone, “Two minutes. Alright? Two minutes. I’ll put the timer on my phone, okay? ”
No response.
“Little wabbit, I need you to answer me. One word. That’s all I need. One word,” I ordered her.
No response, but we knew where she was.
“I’ve put the timer on. Two minutes and counting,” I called out, but her game was to stay quiet because she assumed that if she spoke, it would expose her exact location, even though we already had it.
“One minute,” I informed her as the numbers quickly counted down.
Once the one was up, “Two minutes is up, rabbit. You should’ve caught your breath by now, so here’s what we’re going to do.
Because you called the police on us, we must punish you.
I’m giving you a thirty-second head start, and you’re going to run as fast as you can. Okay?”
No response, but I caught a little whimper, like she was freaking the fuck out.
“Once the thirty seconds are up, we’re coming after you. What we do with you once you’re caught will be up to us,” I told her, then leaned in and whispered to Lev and Ez, “Don’t touch her. She is all mine, got it.”
“Bro,” Ez objected, “Don’t hurt her.”
“Hurt her? She called the fucking police on us. The fuck am I supposed to take it?” I hissed, even though that wasn’t the real reason I was angry.
The real reason I wanted to taunt her was because of the way she looked at me in the library, and I’m going to take a punt that she didn’t know it was me, so that meant she likes to tease her little Boleyn ass off to any stranger. Her father would be ashamed.
“Ready? Go…Thirty,” I began the countdown, and we heard a thrashing sound several feet from where she was positioned. I glanced at Lev, who shook his head and whispered, “I think she just threw something into the bushes to put us off.”
Then she stepped out of her hiding place, and I grinned as she ran up the ridge, then disappeared into the dark. I don’t know if she saw us, but she certainly heard us. “Ten, nine, eight…”
Lev stepped forward, and I stopped him. “She’s mine,” I reminded them. “If you catch her, don’t touch her. Seven, six, five…”
“Don’t hurt her, bro,” Ez breathed. “She had no one now that her dad is dead.”
“No one will miss her then,” I argued, and I sensed Lev squirming.
“I’ll miss her,” Lev said dryly.
“That’s not what we pay you for,” I reminded him. “You failed us. Four, three, two…one. Ready or not, here we come.”