Page 131 of Wyatt

God, please—

Except, maybe she was on her own, despite Gerri’s words to her.You are not alone. God is with you. He will rescue you.

She wasn’t going to wait around and test out that hypothesis.

And sure, her head still spun, her muscles screaming, still flush with toxins, but if she had to run all the way back to Seattle, all the way back to Mikka, well, hello, she was a survivor.

Her father had taught her that.

Her captor cursed and turned away from her, stalking over to his squatty, teardrop camouflage-painted trailer.

She took off.

Not down the trail to civilization, but toward the edge of the forest. The dark, tangled forest.

Step one—get away and hide.

She’d been perfecting that act for most of her life. Maybe she didn’t know what came next.

Live?

“Hey!” Her captor must have seen her escape, and he called her a nasty name as she hit the edge of the woods and plunged in. She pushed past foliage and jumped downed trees, her feet sinking into the spongy soil.

A branch slapped her face, and she winced as blood pooled in the corner of her mouth.

Fast. Quiet.

Desperate.

The dawn was peeling away her safety, sending shafts of pale light into the forest, thick with the loamy scent of dead red alder and quaking aspen leaves.

Behind her, she heard the heavy footfalls of her captor. Shunted, angry breaths.

The underbrush wetted her pants legs, and she ran off-balance, her head swimming.

Run. For Mikka. For Wy—

She tripped over the root of a hemlock tree. With nothing to protect her from the fall, she hit the dirt, hard. Her chin banged on a downed tree, her body bouncing off the ground, slamming back.

Her captor leaped on her, pinning her.

She screamed, writhing. “Get off me!”

He clamped a hand over her mouth, brought his close. “It don’t matter if you scream. Nobody’s around to hear you.”

Then to prove it, he pulled his hand away.

Laughed.

It was throaty and deranged and slid like a knife under her skin. He grabbed her by the jersey and pulled her up, vising the back of her neck. “Fate’s on my side.”

He pushed her through the woods. “I couldn’t believe it when I pulled up and there you were. Dressed in your boyfriend’s jersey, like a sign.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” She jerked, trying to get away from him, and he released her neck, grabbing her arm instead.

“You shouldn’t lie, little girl. I know Wyatt Marshall is your boyfriend. I heard him tell his brother he wanted to marry you.”

Marry?

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