Twisted by Hannah Jayne(78)
She zipped her jacket and stepped away from the group—a cardinal sin, she knew—and headed toward a small bit of earth that looked to have been recently tromped through. She glanced over her shoulder at her group; they were taking a break. Most were drinking from water bottles or sitting in the dirt. No one seemed to miss her. She looked around and saw a path marked by more broken twigs, winding deeper into the forest, deeper into the shadows.
It was impossibly quiet where she was, as if the thick, leafy canopy snuffed out the outside world completely. The result was an eerie stillness that gave Avery goose bumps and sent a quiver through her stomach. A twig snapped behind her and she spun. Her body stiffened like an animal ready to pounce. Then came the rustle of pine needles.
? ? ?
It was back. It—he—whatever or whoever had done this to him was back, probably to finish him off. A tremor of terror rolled through him, each miniscule quiver making his bones crack all over again.
Just kill me. Just kill me and get this over with.
The only part of his head that didn’t feel like it was stuffed with cotton pounded behind his eyes. The blood pulsing through his ears blocked out every other sound, but he thought he could hear the whisper of someone trying to get his attention.
Let him kill me.
He couldn’t run, couldn’t even stand, but something like hope pushed through him
No.
The footsteps grew more distinct. A crunch of leaves, weight on the hard-packed earth.
I don’t want to die.
He could feel the tears warm his cheeks, and he gritted his teeth against the explosion of pain as he inched himself backward under a bush to hide.
Don’t let it get me.
? ? ?
“Hello?” she called out. “This is Avery Templeton with Search Team Five. Hello?”
The silence was complete except for the steady thump of Avery’s heart. She took a step forward and slid on the loose earth, tumbling forward onto her hands and knees. Rocks tore at her skin and the knees of her jeans as she slid. When she stopped—eight, ten feet at the most—she was breathing heavily, her mind reeling. She did a quick assessment for damage. Other than the sting on her palms, nothing hurt.
So why was there blood on her hands?
She brought her hands toward her face and grimaced at the streaks of rust-colored blood—congealed, mixed with dirt—that covered her palms.
She wasn’t bleeding.
This wasn’t her blood.
It was then that she heard the slow gurgle, the sparse intake of breath followed by a low, throaty whisper: “Avery, you have to help me.”
Avery stared at the figure lying in front of her, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light.
“Please.”
The word came out in a desperate hiss, and he clasped a muddy, blood-caked hand around her wrist, his grip limp, his fingers trembling.
She gasped. “Fletcher?”
About the Author
Hannah Jayne decided to be an author in the second grade. She couldn’t spell and had terrible ideas but kept at it and many (many) years and nearly twenty books later, she gets to live her dream and mainly does it in her pajamas.
She lives with her rock star husband and their three overweight cats in the San Francisco Bay Area, always on the lookout for a good mystery, a good story, or a great adventure.