Those men will have to trace the zipline to its destination, challenging in the dark, and across two ridges.
But they’ll find it eventually. A good tracker will pick up our trail, but I’ve got that covered, too.
I pull Savannah down a game trail. Her hand finds mine, squeezes. Blood trickles from a cut on her forehead—flying glass or wood, probably.
"You're hurt." I reach for her face, but she catches my wrist.
"Later. We need to move."
She's right, but the blood makes something primitive in me snarl.
They hurt her.
They destroyed my sanctuary and hurt her, and part of me wants to double back, move silently through the trees, and hunt them one by one until the forest runs red.
But keeping her alive matters more than vengeance.
“This way.”
I guide her down the slope into a narrow drainage ravine, the walls rising on either side like a natural shield. The moon barely reaches the bottom; shadows swallow us whole.
The ground here is mostly packed dirt and stone—hard, cold, blessedly trackless.
Perfect.
I pull her behind a cluster of granite outcroppings, then crouch, scanning the slope we descended.
“Stay close,” I murmur, already moving. “We need to erase everything we can.”
I grab a fallen pine bough—long, bristled with needles—and drag it backward over the faint impressions our boots left in the softer soil.
One clean sweep, then another. The tracks blur, vanish, become just another rough scuff in the uneven ground.
I pivot, studying the rock shelf above us. Light-colored chips from our descent catch the faint moonlight. I nudge each one into the ravine with the side of my boot, sending them skittering down the stone chute where thousands of others already lie.
Nothing distinct.
Nothing directional.
Nothing they can follow.
Savannah watches, wide-eyed, chest still heaving from the zipline. “You’ve done this before,” she whispers.
“Too many times.” I crouch near her and brush dirt over the last patch of disturbed soil with my gloved hand, flattening it until the surface looks untouched. “Hunters always look for the story the ground tells. So we give it silence.”
I step to the ravine’s narrow bend, placing my boots directly into the pockets of shadow where the stone is slick and hard—no tread, no trace. “Put your feet where mine go. No edges. No soft spots.”
She nods, trembling but steadying, and follows behind me.
I guide Savannah into a deeper cut in the ravine and lower my voice. “We’ll hug the stone for the next half mile. No footprints. No scent trail worth a damn. They’ll spread out and waste time.”
“And us?” she whispers.
I take her hand, guiding it to the cool stone wall. “We disappear.”
Then, softer—because she’s shaking again and I feel it in the way she presses close:
“They won’t find you. Not while I’m breathing.”
