“What are you thinking?” Lev asked as he flicked his flashlight on.
“I think we should split up and go three different directions,” I suggested as Ezrah stepped out from the Lud, wearing his hunting boots with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Alright, I’ll head down toward the lake,” he proposed, just as a distant scream belted out from within the forest.
“Hear that?” I asked them.
“Yeah,” Lev said, pointing his flashlight to the left, “it came from that direction.”
“Let’s go,” I said, walking up the rise as the boys followed, and we were jogging up the rise in the direction that the scream came from. We’d stop every few feet to listen for sound, then scan the surrounding trees with our flashlights. The problem was that she didn’t want to be caught, so we had to check behind trees and bushes.
I pursed my lips, then whistled a twitter-type bird tune, then listened for sound. Most people unfamiliar with this forest would gauge their direction by the rise and fall of the landscape and the view of the campus to map their path back home. Hopefully, she wasn’t smart enough to do that and, out of fear, would run further up the mountain away from us and get lost. There would be a point when she’d lose her footing and injure herself, or she’d grow exhausted and need to rest. Either way, I’ll find her.
There was another squeal, then the breaking of a branch, which sounded like she slipped over and grabbed a branch to stop herself from falling.
“Little wabbit,” I called as Ez cracked up laughing. “Little waaabbit.”
“Run, rabbit, run,” Ezrah added.
“You’re fucking nuts,” Lev hissed, then began yapping like a lapdog, which was his signature crazy sound that would make sane people run in the opposite direction. But Lev was not the only insane man in this forest right now.
I shone the flashlight in the direction of the noise, and caught movement quickly hiding behind a tree trunk.
“I’m giving you a head start, wabbit,” my booming voice echoed into the thicket, and I tilted my head searching for sound, breath, footsteps, anything. “You hear me?”
Still no response.
“I’m going to be kind to you because I’m a nice guy like that,” I shouted, and that time, there was a fear-based moan. Music to my ears. We got her. “I’m gonna give you time to catch your breath, say,” I looked at the time on my phone, “Two minutes. Alright? Two minutes. I’ll put the timer on my phone, okay?”
No response.
“Little wabbit, I need you to answer me. One word. That’s all I need. One word,” I ordered her.
No response, but we knew where she was.
“I’ve put the timer on. Two minutes and counting,” I called out, but her game was to stay quiet because she assumed that if she spoke, it would expose her exact location, even though we already had it.
“One minute,” I informed her as the numbers quickly counted down. Once the one was up, “Two minutes is up, rabbit. You should’ve caught your breath by now, so here’s what we’re going to do. Because you called the police on us, we must punish you. I’m giving you a thirty-second head start, and you’re going to run as fast as you can. Okay?”
No response, but I caught a little whimper, like she was freaking the fuck out.
“Once the thirty seconds are up, we’re coming after you. What we do with you once you’re caught will be up to us,” I told her, then leaned in and whispered to Lev and Ez, “Don’t touch her. She is all mine, got it.”
“Bro,” Ez objected, “Don’t hurt her.”
“Hurt her? She called the fucking police on us. The fuck am I supposed to take it?” I hissed, even though that wasn’t the real reason I was angry. The real reason I wanted to taunt her was because of the way she looked at me in the library, and I’m going to take a punt that she didn’t know it was me, so that meant she likes to tease her little Boleyn ass off to any stranger. Her father would be ashamed.
“Ready? Go…Thirty,” I began the countdown, and we heard a thrashing sound several feet from where she was positioned. I glanced at Lev, who shook his head and whispered, “I think she just threw something into the bushes to put us off.”
Then she stepped out of her hiding place, and I grinned as she ran up the ridge, then disappeared into the dark. I don’t know if she saw us, but she certainly heard us. “Ten, nine, eight…”
Lev stepped forward, and I stopped him. “She’s mine,” I reminded them. “If you catch her, don’t touch her. Seven, six, five…”
“Don’t hurt her, bro,” Ez breathed. “She had no one now that her dad is dead.”
“No one will miss her then,” I argued, and I sensed Lev squirming.
“I’ll miss her,” Lev said dryly.
“That’s not what we pay you for,” I reminded him. “You failed us. Four, three, two…one. Ready or not, here we come.”
