72 Hours

That thought terrifies me enough for me to lean down and pick up the rock. I use a new coconut we collected to tip water over it and clean it off. Then I look to Noah. He turns around. I reach into his thick mane of hair and run my hand down until I reach the base of his neck. I find the tiny implant.

“How do I do this?” I ask, fighting the bile rising in my throat.

“You need to get it in your fingers and use the rock to cut the surface. Then you just squeeze.”

I swallow thickly and take a deep breath, then I use the rock to slice his skin. He flinches but doesn’t make a single sound. I know it hurts—I just had it done—and his strength surprises me. Such a powerful male. Blood immediately pours from the wound and I have to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths to keep myself from passing out. My head spins but I concentrate. He needs me to do this.

I open my eyes and squeeze. The little device pops out and I catch it in my fingers, struggling as I become light-headed from the sight. I press the cool shirt to the wound and turn away. There’s so much blood. I close my eyes and try to focus on my breathing. I’ve already lived through worse than this. I can’t let it bother me. No. I’m stronger than this now.

I can do this.

I take a shallow, shaky breath, and then another—until I’m calm again.

After a few minutes, my breathing is strong enough that I straighten and hand him the device. He studies it, then tosses both of them into the stream. He looks up into the trees where he knows the cameras are. “Now the game begins for real.”

He’s poking the devil.

I can’t say I blame him.

“What if there are more?” I ask.

“Come here, we’ll check each other.”

For the next twenty minutes we run our hands over each other’s body, feeling for anything different. The only way we’ll truly know if there is another device, though, is to run and see how quickly he finds us.

“What’s the plan now?” I ask, staring upward as the sun begins to set.

“We should be fairly safe for the night, and we both need to rest. He’ll follow us from the cameras, so we’ll have to go up into the trees again.”

My heart sinks.

I don’t want to climb trees. I want to sleep. To eat. To feel safe.

“I know you don’t want to, but we have to.”

I know we do.

I nod.

“There are some solid trees up there, good enough to get some rest on. How’s your leg?”

“Better than it was.”

“Good. Come on, before the sun goes down.”

“What about the bike?”

“We could hide it, but if he went through the trouble of putting tracking devices on us, I’m sure the bike’s got one, too. Being up there is our only advantage for the moment.”

I sigh and we head up the closest, shortest tree. It takes us a solid ten minutes to get to the top, and my leg throbs with every second, but I don’t complain. Noah’s wounds aren’t so bad, and for now, he should be free of infection if we manage to keep clean.

Noah leans into me when we make it onto the second tree. “He can still hear us on the cameras, so don’t speak unless you have to. We need to move as quietly as we can or he’ll track us by sound.”

I nod.

We carefully move through the trees, and honestly, unless he’s got superhero hearing, I don’t think he’ll be able to hear us among the birds fluttering around and the breeze whooshing through. The sun continues to go down, and we move as far as we can without causing too much ruckus. We make it another hour and a half before we have to stop.

We’ve skipped through easily forty trees, but in the scheme of things, it’s probably not that far. Still, it’s the best we’ve got for right now.

Noah finds a super-thick branch that we can easily sit on, and like last time he presses his back to the trunk and I curl in between his legs, nestling close. He leans down to my ear and whispers, “As soon as the sun comes up, I’m going to inspect one of the cameras. I want to see if I can knock them out.”

I turn my head, and he leans down so I can whisper back. “Do you think they’re connected?”

“I’m not entirely sure; I need to look at them closer. If I can get to one without him seeing, I might be able to disable some. Throw him off guard.”

“How do you mean?”

“It might give us a few hours extra to move away from him if he’s busy fixing them.”

“The big question here is, How are we going to end this? It’s two against one. Surely we have a chance to take him down.”

He nods. “Possibly, but today he came so close to being taken out by us. He’s not going to be that careless next time. He won’t allow us to get that close. I think he’s going to up the game.”

I swallow.

“You can’t hesitate, Lara. If you get close enough to him, kill him. I know that thought terrifies you, but you need to take the chance if it’s presented to you.”

My body tightens. I’ve tried to disable him so we could get away. I never considered trying to kill someone before.

“Okay,” I whisper. “If that’s what it takes.”

Noah gives me a soft look before continuing, “I want to try to follow him. I don’t know how we’re going to do that, but if we can find where he’s going back to, we might be able to finish this.”

“With those cameras, we’ll never be able to follow him.”

“That’s why they’re my next project. They have to be controlled somehow. I’m going to figure out how they work and I’m going to shut them down.”




No.

No.

Panic takes hold in full force as I study the cameras, watching them remove the trackers from their necks. No. They’re ruining my plan. They’re changing the rules.

I wipe the blood from my brow, because that stupid behemoth man tackled me. He nearly got me. He nearly ended my game before I even had the chance to play.

Going into the stream was smart. They’re smart.

Not smarter than me. I still have my cameras, I’ll find them, I’ll make them wish they never defied me.

If they’re planning on taking me out, they’re wrong. I’m going to hurt them so badly, they’ll wish they were never born. Then we’ll see who has the upper hand.

It’s time to kick the game into full force. No more messing around.

They’re going to wish they never met me by the time I’m done with them.

Oh wait, no they won’t, because they’ll be dead.





SIXTEEN

I fall asleep quickly. Noah’s arms remain around me all night, and it’s good to feel secure for a few hours. We’re woken by the sun shining through the branches of the trees. The forest is dead silent, as if everything has just stopped. Or maybe it’s just that we can’t hear the low hum of a motorbike. Does this mean he hasn’t been able to track us?

I can only hope so.

“Morning,” Noah whispers into my ear.

“Hey,” I whisper back. “He’s not here.”

“Can only hope that’s a good sign.”

“Are we getting down from these trees?”