Page 198 of Tag

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

SANJANA

My phone was blowing up.

Buzz after buzz, vibrating across the nightstand like it had something to say. I groaned and reached for it, the sleeve of Ryder’s T-shirt slipping halfway down my arm, still warm from sleep, and smelling like him. His side of the bed was empty. Cooler now. I looked around and saw that his hoodie and shoes were gone.

I checked my phone again and saw three missed calls. Four new texts. It started ringing again, and I answered without thinking.

“Someone better be dead.”

His voice came ragged. “She is!”

That got me fully awake. “Who?” I sat up fast, blanket tangled around me, the phone pressed tight to my ear.

“Angel—thank fuck.” His voice cracked, like he’d been pacing or running. “I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at, but I had to make sure it wasn’t you.”

“What are you talking about?” I glanced at the time. 8:32 A.M. Sunday. I was doomed to never sleep in again. “Why would it be me?”

“Check the Marked chat.”

I didn’t want to. In fact, every part of me resisted the idea, but the way his voice shook, I knew it was serious. I tapped into the group thread, switching to speaker. Most people weren’t awake yet, but a video had been pinned.

Still fresh, low on views.

??TEO??????

Happy Hunting.

“I’m watching it now,” I said, hesitating before I tapped the screen.

The thumbnail expanded.

At first, the frame was angled down at the ground. Leaves. Dirt. A boot. Someone was breathing behind the camera, the sound distorted and warped. Then a voice came, just as distorted.

“This is the part where you run.”

The camera lifted. It caught a Private Property sign nailed to a tree, then panned over a cornfield just as a girl burst out of it, sprinting toward the woods. She was barefoot, visibly bruised. Dressed in nothing but a bra and underwear. Her arms were bound in front of her with what looked like a red zip-tie as she ran past. The person recording followed without rushing, boots moving over twigs and roots like he wasn’t even trying.

The footage was too smooth.

A thin wire stretched between two trees came into frame. The girl hit it hard. Her body folded and dropped with a choked gasp and a sickening crack.

I choked on a breath and held my throat as if it were I who had just run into that. “What the fuck is this?”

“I don’t know,” Ashton said, his voice tight through the speaker. “But I swear to god, for a second I thought—”

The footage cuts to a room. No—a basement. Or a bunker. Dark stone walls were too smooth to be natural. Too sterile to be anything but planned. The corners blurred. Shadows warped unnaturally. The girl was there, and alive. Much to my relief. I wasn’t sure if it was better for her, though.

Her bra had been taken off and was now shoved into her mouth like a gag. Blood ran from her neck in thin rivulets from where the wire had cut. Her arms were bound above her head; rope threaded through a hook bolted into the ceiling.

Someone else stepped into view, masked and silent. They circled her like she was meat hung to drain. “You said Hellraiser was your favorite, right?” The voice was still distorted, but playful.

The girl sobbed. Broken, hoarse sounds leaked around the gag—her bra, twisted and soaked. Her blonde hair had been hacked off in jagged chunks. Pieces stuck to her shoulders like straw. The camera shifted. Barely. Enough to catch movement in the corner. Someone else was there, watching.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, barely audible.

The main guy vanished off-screen, then reappeared, dragging some kind of altered chain behind him. It scraped along the floor,

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