The other guy. The one who’d started it all.
Maybe if I’d told myself to be calm, steady, and smart when I’d lurked outside his building, I wouldn’t be here right now. Maybe he’d be dead and I’d be at home with my parents, baking a flourless chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache and an accompanying lavender whipped cream.
Lavender whipped cream was my mom’s favorite kind.
Or maybe I’d be in jail.
In any case, I’d failed.
I couldn’t afford to fail again.
The Barbarian watched the timer on his phone. “Ready, set…”
I stepped back until I was at the back of the group of girls, then edged toward the hall that led to the open door.
I’d just reached it when the Barbarian spoke the word that, one way or another, would change my life.
“Run."
5
MAEVE
I wasthe first one through the door at the end of the hall. The darkness hit me like a physical thing, a wall my brain didn’t want to move past, the smell of damp earth and old concrete and something that might have been mouse shit (I wouldn’t think about the possibility of rats until I had to) filling my nostrils.
Behind me, the other girls scrabbled, their voices a murmur as they hit the wall of dark.
I pulled out my phone — no signal, which explained why the Barbarian hadn’t taken it — and turned on the flashlight, but after walking for another thirty seconds I caught the glow of a red light hanging from the ceiling.
I kept going and realized the lights were spaced about four hundred feet apart, far enough to allow for pockets of darkness but close enough that I didn’t need my flashlight.
Not yet anyway.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket, wanting to save the battery.
Fifty feet into the tunnel, another tunnel branched to the right, a second one stretching to the left. I passed them both infavor of putting as much distance as possible between the men and me.
Some of the girls behind me stopped to discuss the new tunnels, but the blonde who’d been standing next to me before the Hunt appeared at my side.
“How much time do you think has passed?” she asked.
I was glad she kept pace with me. I wasn’t here for conversation.
“Maybe two minutes?”
I thought about Main Street, mapped the shops in my head, wondered how far the tunnels went.
“This place is creepy as fuck,” the blonde girl said.
I didn’t ask her name. The red neon sign had said no names, and anyway, it didn’t matter. We weren’t here to make friends.
We came to another tunnel on the right, and without skipping a beat, the blonde made the turn.
“Good luck,” she called out.
She was obviously as determined as I was, and I wondered about her story, wondered why she was here and who she wanted dead, because for all the differences between me and the other girls, we had that one thing in common.
“You too.”
