Crunch.
I wasn’t hallucinating, I don’t think. Someone was following me. Fear shot through me like electricity. I stumbled forward, nearly tripping as I pushed deeper into the trees. Branches whipped at my arms. Snow stung my cheeks. My breath hitched. I veered left, squeezing into a narrow cluster of spruce trunks. The branches scraped my coat, snagging fabric. Something tugged at my pocket. I yanked free without looking. I had to hide. Just for a moment. Just until the footsteps passed and I could catch my breath.
A fallen log stretched across a shallow slope up ahead, its underside hollowed out by years of decay. I dropped to my knees, crawled beneath it, and pressed myself against the frozen ground. Snow drifted down through the gaps overhead, settling on my hair, my lashes. I clamped my hand over my mouth. Silence stretched.
Footsteps approached.
Slow. Measured.
My heart thrashed. Every muscle locked. My lungs burned from holding my breath.
The steps grew louder.
Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.
They stopped just above me.
I could see the shadow of boots through the thin scatter of branches. Heavy, deliberate. The figure paused long enough that I felt the heat of their attention like a spotlight pinning me to the earth.
Don’t breathe. Don’t move. Don’t exist.
The world narrowed to that single moment: the person above me, the snow drifting between us, the terror thundering in my chest.
Then I heard a second set of footsteps. They sounded farther away and had a different rhythm.
Eric.
Something in my gut told me it was him, like I could feel his closeness in my bones. My heart lurched toward the sound so painfully I almost crawled out of hiding. But whoever was hovering close by shifted at the same moment. He was too close now. Too aware of my existence. I stayed frozen, pressing myself deeper into the shadows beneath the log. The closer footstepsresumed moving past me now, slow and searching until finally, finally, the sound faded into the storm.
I didn’t move.
Not when the snow whispered across my face.
Not even when my lungs screamed for air.
Only when my body began to shake so violently I thought I’d break apart did I inch forward and slip out from beneath the log. The night closed around me again, thick and cold and waiting. I rose on trembling legs. Eric was out here but someone else was out here too. And the storm was erasing everything between us.
I tightened my grip on where the relay scrap should have been in my pocket. The paper was gone. Swallowed by the woods. I’d almost lost it once already. Losing it again felt like the woods claiming it back. Or maybe it was the person hunting me. I didn’t look back. I ran.
CHAPTER 44
Eric
The deeper I pushed into the ridge, the more the storm felt alive, like it was trying to bury everything before I could find it. Snow swallowed the prints Harmony left behind faster than I could follow them. Every second stretched tight and sharp, a constant reminder she was out here somewhere in the dark with someone who wasn’t me.
My flashlight beam cut across the ground in quick sweeps, searching for anything; an indentation, a scuff, a hint of direction. My breath fogged in front of me, blowing sideways in the wind. My chest burned from the cold, but I barely felt it. Fear burned hotter.
“Harmony…” I whispered into the night, even though I didn’t dare raise my voice. The wind took the sound anyway. I crouched beside a patch of disturbed snow, faint, barely there, but enough to tell me she’d stepped here. The edges were softening. Minutes old at best. My pulse spiked.
“You’re close,” I murmured. Saying it helped me stay focused. Saying it kept panic from tearing through me. A vibration buzzed in my pocket. I snatched my phone out, my service was back. It was a slight relief.
Becket:Where exactly are you? Dad and I are 12 minutes from the ridge. Do NOT engage alone.
I typed fast, thumbs stiff from the cold:
