She hesitates, the rifle trembling in her hand as her eyes dart between the charging bear and me.
"Trust me!"
The bear is thirty yards away. Twenty. Ten.
Something changes in her expression, and resolve gives way to surrender. She yanks the rifle from her shoulder and throws it to me.
I don't hold back like I did with the hatchet. At full, fluid, inhuman speed, I catch the rifle, chamber a round, flip off the safety, bring the stock to my shoulder, and squeeze the trigger.
The rifle bucks against my shoulder. The sound cracks through the forest like thunder. The bear's massive body lurches, then collapses mid-stride, momentum carrying its lifeless form forward. It skids to a halt barely five feet from where we stand, dust and pine needles billowing around us.
Perfect shot. Center of the skull. Instantaneous death.
Silence falls heavy in the clearing, broken only by Naomi's rapid breathing. I lower the rifle slowly, already feeling the weight of her stare. When I turn to face her, I see what I expect to see as realization dawns in those captivating eyes.
No ordinary hunter makes that shot. No civilian moves at that speed. No normal person shifts from passive to lethal in the space of a heartbeat.
She just revealed some of her secrets.
And now so have I.
Her eyes dart from the bear to me, then to the rifle in my hands. She now understands that the most dangerous predator in these woods isn't the one bleeding out at our feet. Her question hangs between us, unasked but impossible to miss.
Who are you, really?
Instead of waiting for her to find the words, I extend my arms, offering her back the rifle. Handle first, barrel pointed down andaway.
She hesitates, fingers twitching slightly before wrapping around the weapon. Our hands brush, and I feel that same electricity that sparked in our look while she fed me. Something I've no right to feel.
"I was never going to hurt you," she murmurs quietly.
"I know," I say. Maybe I didn't know it when I first met her, but I know it now.
Our eyes lock. Something passes between us at that moment.
Recognition, maybe.
For one beat of my heart that I no longer recognize, no space exists between Naomi and me. We're not captor and captive. We’re two people, exiled in the rain-soaked woods, haunted by different secrets, but understanding what that means.
Until the moment shatters like glass.
"FREEZE! DON'T FUCKING MOVE!"
Five
My muscles tense, but my face is blank. Four men materialize from the trees wearing black tactical vests with the word "MARSHAL" emblazoned across them.
One of them has his weapon trained on me. The other three converge on Naomi. There's nothing I can do but watch as they restrain her. She doesn't resist as they wrench her arms behind her back, the metallic click of handcuffs echoing in the clearing.
The thought burns and crackles, sudden and painful.
Don’t fucking touch her.
But what can I do? Kill law enforcement?
That is not something I'm prepared to do.
I don’t even understand why I’m thinking about it.
