Their laughter — clipped and mean, cutting through the quiet like it enjoyed hurting things. Not boys laughing. Not friends teasing. Predators baring teeth.
The doors — two heavy thuds, then gravel crunching under boots. That rhythm crawled into my bones and stayed there. It’s never left.
Two men stepped out.
The driver didn’t move. He leaned on the open window, smiling like he’d seen this scene before and already knew the ending. His amusement was soft, almost gentle.
Somehow that was the worst part.
The air turned thick, humid and dark. The sky bruised at the edges. Missy’s grip tightened again — and for the last time in my life, my sister’s hand felt like home.
Missy moved first.
Her fingers clamped around my wrist, nails digging in. She shook. I felt it. But her voice — God, her voice — didn’t break.
“Run,” she whispered.
“I—”
“Now, Rowan!”
She shoved me forward.
In that single push, everything changed.
The light. The air. The sound of my name leaving her mouth.
It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t fear. It was love stripped down to its bones.
So I ran.
The world explodedinto green and gold when I hit the cornfields. Stalks slapped my face, clawed at my arms, left thin burning lines everywhere they touched. The rows swallowed me whole, closing behind me like a secret the dark wanted to keep.
The air pressed tight, wet and gritty. Every breath tasted like soil.
Behind me came the sound of pursuit — branches snapping, the thud of heavy steps, breath turning ugly. Then the laugh. A broken, uneven sound that didn’t belong to a human who cared whether I lived or died. It was the laugh of someone who liked the chase. Liked the fear. Liked me running.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are…”
His voice rose like a taunt, wrong in every possible way.
I dropped lower, crawling, letting the corn close over me. Leaves sliced my cheeks. My palms stung where the dirt and gravel scraped skin. My heartbeat wasn’t in my chest anymore — it rattled in my teeth, throbbed in my ears, pulsed in my fingertips.
Movements rustled to my left. Stalks swayed where they shouldn’t. He was circling.
“You can’t hide forever, sweetheart,” he said, too calm. Too sure of himself.“If I don’t get to you, the rats will. They’ll start with your fingers. Maybe your pretty face. You don’t want that, do you?”
My insides flipped so violently I thought I might throw up. I pressed my mouth into my elbow, smothering the sound of my breathing. I tasted sweat and dirt. I held still. So still it hurt.
He moved again, slower now, letting the corn whisper behind him like a warning.“You’ll come out sooner or later,” he crooned.“Even if I have to drag you out myself.”
I forced my body forward. My scraped knees sank into mud. Mypalms trembled. Ahead, through the blur of stalks, something shone — light, thin and pale. An opening. A way out.
I crawled toward it.
“I’m coming, little hellion,” he murmured, close enough that I could hear his clothes snag on the corn.
I didn’t look back.
