Page 15

“What do you want?” I demand again, trying to seem like I’m not afraid of him by taking a step forward with the crowbar. “I’m not fucking around with–”

“What’s your name?” The voice from under the mask is slightly muffled from the plastic, and the words have me jerking back until I’m pressed to the counter again.

“Fuck off.”

“Not a very common one. Family name?” he quips right back. The words have the side of my mouth jerking up in an unwilling smirk, but I force it down.

“Tell me how to get out of this place.” My words are more confident than I feel, though I choose to ignore the tremor in my voice that makes itself known. I have every reason to be freaked out, I remind myself. It doesn’t make me any weaker when I’m the one here with a weapon. “Tell me how to get past the fence.”

His head tilts and he just stands there. Looking completely at ease. The mask tilts down as he studies the crowbar in my hand, then back up, so I have the eerie sensation that he’s holding my gaze.

“Cute. A little dull for my taste, though. Honestly, I sort of prefer…” He takes his hands out of his pockets and reaches behind him, tugging something free.

A knife.

The blade flashes in the midway lights. Long and metallic and oh-so-sharp. Sharper than my crowbar by a lot, though I remind myself that I have the reach on him. Technically, if I’m good enough and lucky enough, I could crack him over the head the same way I had the bride.

If I’m not lucky enough, then I’ll get stabbed. Probably repeatedly.

Probably to death.

With that thought, I make the hopefully smarter decision.

I run.

Wheeling around, I take off down the midway, darting between two games and passing an old cotton candy stand with the windows completely gone. Part of me considers trying to hide in this one or another like it. Can the hunters really check all of them before they get bored?

Yeah, Sable, my brain tells me unhelpfully. Yeah, they definitely can. They’re not going to give up looking for me just because they can’t easily find me, after all, when it’s their asses on the line and jail on the table if anyone finds out about this.

Something cold settles in my marrow at that thought. As if I’d been holding onto some stupid idea of being able to outlast them.

They can’t let anyone get away. Not when it will mean the end of them if anyone can go to the cops. The realization makes me nauseous, now that it sits in the forefront of my mind. I stumble over a set of thick cords, hitting the pier hard and cracking my knees on the half-rotted wood.

A groan leaves me and my crowbar spins across the wood, rolling a few inches too far for me to grab. But I do, once I’m on my feet and running again. I snatch it up in one hand and stumble onward as my knees scream in protest, demanding a break and to be looked at. Already I can feel the heat of blood against my kneecaps, reminding me of so many times as a kid when I’d scraped them raw during a furious game of tag with my two best friends.

The sting pushes me onward, until I finally find myself up on the deck of one of two roller coasters on the pier.

The cars, to my surprise, look almost functional. Like I could strap someone in and start it, only for the ride to immediately fling into motion like it had years before. The only broken things up here are some planks, and the glass around the operator’s booth. Even the lights on the ceiling above blink on and off in their set pattern, and I glance up to see that more than half of them are still operational.

“Welcome to the Diamondback. Please keep your arms and legs–” I jerk up at the automated voice, surprise rippling through me to hear it. But it cuts off, then starts again, filling my ears with the same words over and over again, until it becomes an annoying bit of white noise.

I whirl around, hoping that somehow, the hunter following me had gotten lost. As ridiculous as that is. But sure enough, he’s climbing the stairs to the platform as well, the knife still in his hand, his mask tilted up at me indulgently.

“A bit bright,” he comments absently, looking around. “Aren’t you trying to hide? This is a shitty place to be inconspicuous, you know.”

Staring at him, I take a moment to breathe, watching him examine the platform and eventually even the roller coaster cars themselves. “You really used to work here?” he kicks the side of the car, sending a small, dull clang up between us.

“How…how do you know that?” I search my brain, scouring it for the memory of when I might have said that to the two men in the motel that night. I’m sure I hadn’t. It’s not like I walk around announcing it, and my Wonderlight Pier t-shirts are mostly all in my lounge tees drawer, given how faded and threadbare they are after about ten thousand cycles in the laundry. “Do you know me?” The question is presented more as a demand than an inquiry, and my tone makes him pause and look at me again, his head tilted in a way that I don’t really love.

"I don’t know,” he drawls at last. “Haven’t decided yet. Why don’t you tell me your name, pretty girl, and we’ll find out if I know you?”

“Why don’t you tell me yours?”

“I asked first.”

“I’m a lady.”

“You’re holding the crowbar, which is the bigger of our weapons, so…” He gazes down at his knife, like he’s examining it. “I think you get to go first.”