Chapter Eight
The electrical tape on the stairwell striker plate was peeling.
When Lucas eased the heavy fire door open, the brass latch caught the edge of the steel frame with a dull, metallic scrape that seemed to rattle the entire stairwell. He froze, his shoulder wedged against the cold cinder block, holding his breath until the sound died away into the concrete shaft.
Nothing moved. Just the faint hum of the fluorescent tube on the landing above.
He peeled his socks off on the third-floor mat to keep from tracking wet mulch down the hall. His heels were sore, the skin tight and hot, and a thin streak of dried pine sap was gummed into the side of his palm, picking up black lint from his pockets.
He worked the handle of room 314 down an eighth of an inch at a time. The door swung inward on its hinges without a squeak.
The small brass gooseneck lamp on the far desk clicked on.
Lucas stopped with one hand still on the brass knob.
Kevin Chen was sitting upright in his desk chair, wearing a faded gray track hoodie, his bare feet propped on the lower crossbar of the bookshelf. A highlighted biomechanics reader lay open in his lap, weighted down by a plastic water bottle.
The blue light from Kevin's laptop screen lit the dark circles under his eyes.
"You're tracking dirt on the rug," Kevin said. His voice was gravelly with fatigue, stripped of its usual locker-room bounce.
Lucas didn't move. "Thought you were asleep."
"I was." Kevin tossed his plastic highlighter onto the desk.
It rolled against the laptop base with a sharp tap.
He turned in the swivel chair, planting both feet on the linoleum.
His gaze didn't stay on Lucas's face; it dropped to Lucas's sweatpants, tracking the wet mud caked along the cuffs and the dark patches of damp earth ground into the fabric over both knees.
"Campus safety had two cruisers sitting on the reservoir road earlier. "
Lucas felt his pulse spike in his throat, but he kept his shoulders level. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Flashing amber bars, spotlights cutting through the trees behind the maintenance sheds.
" Kevin leaned his elbows on his knees, staring straight at him.
"Someone called the campus switchboard. Said there were people moving around the lower fire roads with flashlights.
Security is sweeping the perimeter every two hours now. "
Lucas reached down, unlaced his road flats with numb fingers, and dropped them into the corner by his wardrobe. "Probably kids from the fraternity houses."
"Don't play stupid, Lucas."
The interruption was flat and hard.
Lucas straightened up, his back stiff against the doorframe. "I'm not playing anything."
"You smell like pitch and dirt," Kevin said, his voice dropping lower, cutting through the hum of the radiator.
"You've slipped out four times recently.
You come back looking like you took a beating in the brush, your splits are all over the place, and yesterday at practice, Miller had to call your name three times on the starting line before you even heard him. "
"I'm fine. I'm just putting in extra base miles."
"In the dark? Off-trail?" Kevin shook his head, a line deepening between his brows. "You know what people say about those woods. You know what's out there."
The air in the narrow room went thick, cold and suffocating. Lucas’s fingers curled into the fabric of his pockets, the dried sap tacky against his skin. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I don't care what you're doing," Kevin said, leaning forward.
"Honestly, I don't give a damn who you're meeting or what you're into.
But Miller called a team meeting for tomorrow morning before the bus loading.
If security catches an athlete out past curfew on state park land, they pull the university grant. Immediately. No hearing, no appeal."
Kevin stood up, picked his empty water bottle off the desk, and tossed it into the recycling bin.
"You lose your scholarship, you're off the squad," Kevin said, walking to his bunk. "And if you get dropped, our relay split takes the hit. Pull your head out of your ass, Lucas. Whatever is out in those trees, it isn't worth your ride."
Kevin yanked his sleeping bag up over his shoulders and turned his face to the wall.
Lucas stood by the closed door for several minutes, the silence in the room heavy and jagged. His heart hammered a hollow rhythm against his ribs. He looked down at his hands—at the dirt under his fingernails, the faint scrape along his wrist where rough bark had bitten into the tendon.
Every word Kevin had said was true.
He was one slip away from total ruin. His tuition, his room, the only thing that gave his weeks order and purpose—all of it hung on the grace of an athletic department that looked at runners as cheap engine parts to be swapped out the second they showed wear.
He stripped off his dirty gear in the dark, stuffing the muddy sweatpants into the bottom of his laundry sack, and climbed onto his cot.
His body was exhausted, every joint aching with the dull burn of high mileage, but when he shut his eyes, the dark room didn't bring sleep. It brought the memory of Jax’s hand flat against his chest, holding him down on the timber, cutting through the freezing mist with an absolute, terrifying weight that no rulebook could touch.
The blue plastic folding chairs in the varsity film room were cold when the squad sat down after morning inspection.
Coach Miller stood by the dry-erase board, his arms folded across the faded university crest on his windbreaker. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting a sickly white sheen across the linoleum floor.
Taped to the center of the whiteboard was a crisp white sheet of paper bearing the campus security division's embossed seal.
"Read it," Miller said. He didn't raise his voice, but the entire room went dead. "Read every single word."
Nobody moved. Lucas kept his eyes trained on the floor between his training shoes, his hands clasped tightly between his thighs.
"The state forestry division and campus safety have launched joint patrols along the Blackwood boundary," Miller said, pacing the narrow space between the front row and the board.
"Night-vision units, trail cameras at the reservoir gates, and trespassing citations that carry immediate expulsion from university athletics.
Some of the locals have been using the access roads for off-the-books bullshit, and the county is cracking down. "
Miller stopped right at the end of Lucas's row. The rubber soles of his coaching shoes squeaked against the floor.
"Regional championship bus leaves Friday afternoon for the capital," Miller said, his gaze sweeping over the distance runners.
"Every man in this room is on probation until we clear the final heat on Saturday.
If I catch one of you off-campus after nine, if I see one name on a security incident blotter, you won't even get the chance to pack your bags.
You'll be off the roster before your gear hits the turf. "
Miller picked up his whistle, letting the brass cylinder swing on its lanyard.
"Uniform distribution at three. Hydrate, stay off your feet, and keep your doors shut. Dismissed."
The chairs scraped back in a chaotic wave of nylon and rubber as the team filtered out toward the locker bays.
Lucas grabbed his kit bag from the floor, his stomach twisting into a tight, acid knot. He could feel Kevin walking three paces behind him, silent, watching his back with a quiet, judgmental weight.
There was no way back into the woods.
The trail was burned. If Jax went down to the hollow tonight—if he waited by the fallen white pine with the thermos, expecting Lucas to push through the sweetgum brush—he was walking straight into a line of flashlights and forestry cruisers.
And Lucas had no way to reach him.
They didn't have each other's numbers. They didn't have social accounts. Their entire connection existed in the pitch-black space between the university boundary and the dirt hollow—built on anonymous timing, heavy breathing, and stolen friction in the cold.
The panic sat behind Lucas's teeth, cold and suffocating.
He walked out through the athletic center's heavy double doors, stepping into the freezing gray noon.
Across the campus bus loop, the charter coaches were already parked, their luggage bays open as equipment managers loaded gear trunks, preparing for the weekend trip to the regional championships in the state capital.
Lucas tightened his grip on his bag strap, his jaw setting hard against the wind.
The woods were closed. The perimeter was locked down.
If they were going to survive this—if Jax was going to stay within reach—everything was going to have to blow open under the bright lights of the capital hotel.