Page 121 of Love is Angry

Hazing.

I pause, heart pounding. I remember running through these woods, dodging pellets, getting hit. Those pellets burned like a bitch—but how much worse would it have been for me if the bullets were real?

I’ve made the right calls. Our friends, Noelle, and Ithaca emergency responders all know where I’m headed—and where Maddie is being held. I could wait for them—but what if they come in loud, guns blazing, and the kidnapper panics? He’d kill her. What if he gets bored while I’m waiting and does something even worse? That thought turns my stomach, and before I’ve even made a conscious decision, I start moving. Low and quiet, I stick to the shadows.

It’s a quick trek up to the cabin, provided one knows that there is, in fact, a cabin less than a mile north-east of the service road. I move slowly and carefully. The closer I get, the lighter my boots become. I don’t want anyone to see me coming—and with Rita’s last message, I’m sure they want me to come. I was lured out here and I know it’s a trap—but I can’t just walk away, and I can’t stand around like a useless lump and wait.

A branch cracks above my head and I hear the retort a second later. Fuck. I drop and roll into bushes, then out the other side as leaves and twigs fly off under a shower of bullets. With my gun in hand, I book it through the woods, up a creek bed, toward the cabin.

Tiny explosions seek me out, in the earth behind my ankles, in the trees above my head. A skirt of roots beckons me into its inky shadow and I dive, then focus on breathing absolutely silently. It’s not easy. My heart is thundering so hard I’m sure my pursuer can hear it, and it’s sucking the oxygen from my lungs. I desperately want to gasp and gulp the air—and I know that’s the worst possible thing I can do.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Mackenzie? What the fuck?

“Oh, Rhue! Where are you, my little bouncing bunny? Don’t you want to play?”

A bullet claps off the flat stones in the creek bed three feet from where I’m hiding.

“You know you forfeit if you don’t play the game,” she says. She sounds pouty, like a spoiled, disappointed child. She fires again, taking the top off of a vaguely man-sized bush across the way from me. She’s in the right general area, which is not ideal. Not even a little bit.

“Ugh, my God! Why do you assholes have to make everything so hard?”

Can I record her without revealing myself with the light on my phone? I fumble for a moment, but eventually I get it. As long as I don’t accidentally turn the flash on or something, I’ll be fine. I just don’t know if it’ll pick up what she’s saying through the distance and the roots and—okay, just the roots. I hold my breath as crumbs of earth rattle down over me. She’s standing inches over my head.

“You know, I’d say it was a family thing—gotta chase Julian down for payment, gotta chase Rhue through the damn woods over and over and over again—but then I realized, it’s not genetic! It’s just the kinds of people who happen to put up with you, Rhue. The kind who make you chase them. Like Madison! That fucking bitch. She almost killed me with that stunt shepulled! Slamming on the brakes right before a curve, sending me careening toward the lake, swear to god if I didn’t have to play this stupid game I would have killed her myself.”

My heart sinks. Madison—she’s not dead. Is she? Is Mackenzie pissed that she’s alive, or pissed that she wasn’t the one to kill her? My mind is racing. Fuck, where is everybody? I knew I’d get here first, but I didn’t think it would take them this long.

“Oh my God Rhue! What is even so hard about this? Just fucking die!”

Bullets explode in a semi-circle around my hiding spot. There’s a gap between the roots right above me—I can see the heel of her left boot. If I aim right, I could—

What am I thinking? Am I really going to kill Mackenzie in cold blood? Let’s be honest, though—there’s nothing cold about my blood. Not right now. I’m boiling, simmering. But I’m also shaking. Adrenaline and the unending horrors of the day have got me trembling, and I could miss. If I miss, she’ll have the advantage, and she won’t hesitate. Every shot fired makes my heart skip—then the shots stop, replaced by frantic metallic clicking.

“God damn it! Rhue, you asshole, you better be dying somewhere. Ammo’s not free, you know.”

She jumps down into the creek, right in front of me. It’s my only chance. She’s got more ammo somewhere, and if I give her the chance to grab it, I’m done for. I’ve been firing guns for sport since I was eight, and I know I’ll hit exactly what I aim for. I guess sometimes you have to ask yourself the important questions: am I a killer?

Hating myself with every fiber of my being, I aim and pull the trigger.

Chapter 51

Madison

The pained shriek of a wounded animal makes me jump. I’ve been hearing the gunshots for the last five minutes, and every one of them was like a knife in my heart. I’ve been fantasizing about rescue—but when the gunshots started, Jake laughingly informed me that he had an armed guard with a killer bod to match her killer attitude. He also told me that he only knew of one person who had even the slightest chance of knowing where to find me—Rhue.

Jake listens to the scream like it’s music, smiling softly and rocking back and forth. He opens his eyes and shrugs.

“Oh, well. That’s what I get for letting Julian saddle me with an amateur. Don’t worry—that’s not your Rhue-Rhue screaming. That’s my apprentice—a psychotic bitch Julian broke in for me. Man, I wish I could’ve done it myself.” He chuckles low in his throat, gazing at the ceiling.

Fear slides down my spine. For all that I thought I bonded with the guy, seeing the glassy-eyed thrill he’s getting from a wounded woman’s scream, watching him daydream about—god, I don’t even want to know what—is making the tiny bit of hope I’ve allowed myself to hold die a slow and painful death. Mybreath shakes in my chest as I watch him clean and load his gun, still smiling that goofy, terrifying smile.

He catches me looking and his grin widens. “Don’t you worry, little lamb. Soon, Mr. Rhue will be here, and I’ll tell him the deal—to swap you for his sister. Then little Laura and I will run away to the Bahamas, and you and Rhue can go off to Tibet or Venezuela or wherever it is aspiring anthropologists go these days. Happy endings all around!”

I’m not stupid enough to say anything at this point. He’s clearly right on the edge of a breakdown—if he thinks he’ll get out of the country with Julian’s child, he’s out of his goddamned mind.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “You’re thinking, what if Laura doesn’t want to go with you, Jake? And the answer to that is, she does. I know she does. We’ve had moments, Madison—deep and meaningful moments. Every time I step foot in the mansion, our eyes meet—and it’s like the whole world stops. She smiles at me—she sees me, you know. Really sees me, kind of like you do—only, she likes me. She said hello to me once—she knew my name, Madison.” He sighs so happily, if he were a cartoon he’d have hearts for eyes.

---