It’s an invitation.
He hurt her.
I want him to feel it, to taste the insult, like poison on his tongue, bitter and unmistakable. I want his rage to stir, slowly, coiling in the pit of him like a predator pacing its cage. Let it simmer. Let it burn. Because when he breaks – when he finally comes for me after all these years – I’ll be ready.
CHAPTER 16
THE DIPLOMAT
The forest swallowed sound like it was hungry. I move low, but fast. Branches claw at my jacket, sweat slick at the back of my neck despite the chill. Thirty minutes. That was my window. After that, the rules changed – and not in my favour.
My father taught me to track when I was barely tall enough to see over brambles. Said it was about patience, noticing what others missed. Not everyone leaves footprints, he told me – but they always leave something behind: it could be a snapped twig or a blunt blade of grass. He had a way of reading the world like a book written in motion – each crease in the dirt a sentence, a broken branch a warning. It’s how he survived.
We’d go out just after the rain, when the ground was soft. At first, he showed me how to track deer, showing me the rhythm of movement – when to listen, when to breathe.‘People walk like they’re invincible,’he would say. Tracking deer was never about the hunt. Not really. It was about reading people – knowing where they’d run when they didn’t want to be followed.
The first time he made me track someone, it wasn’t a lesson, it was a test. A thief had vanished from one of the nearby villages. My father didn’t lecture me, didn’t explain. He simply handed me a photograph and said,‘We leave at dusk.’
And I found them. Because when I was trained to look beyond the obvious – when I learnt to follow the story written in disturbed leaves, I realised everyone is running from something. More often than not, they’re running so fast, they don’t even know what they’ve left behind.
I crouch low, my palm pressed to the earth, just like I was taught. Mud disturbed. A fern crumpled in the wrong direction.
I’m close.
Behind me, the forest stretches quiet but watching. I move forward tracking Stella.
‘You don’t track with your eyes,’my father had said, with boots sunk deep into the wet loom of the Scottish glen.‘You track with your gut, son.’I was eleven then, mud up to my shins, the cold seeping into my bones. But I listened.‘You want to find someone? Everyone leaves a signature,’he crouched beside a print.‘This...here, is where he turned to check behind him. You see that dip in the heel?’he pointed.‘Nervous. He stepped ‘cause the thought he’d heard something.’
I crest the ridge and freeze, breath curling into a mist. A broken branch points east. Below, water glistens, and beyond it, I know, hides the Rabbit Warren. Then I see her.
She’s wide-eyed and frantic, staggering through the weave of trees. Her breath catches in frantic bursts, mud clawing up her calves.
But she’s alive!
‘Stella!’ I call out, my voice cracking through the silence.
She falters for a heartbeat then picks up speed. She doesn’t look back.Of course, she doesn’t!
Goddamnit.
I surge forward, lungs burning. I’m too old for this shit, and I don’t have time. Thirty minutes – less now. I catch her at the edge of a ravine, fingers closing around her waist just before she makes the leap.
‘Let me go,’ she hisses, twisting violently.
‘Stella, stop – listen to me.’
She swings at me, fast and reckless. Her knuckles crack against my shoulder. Teeth bared, eyes wild. ‘I don’t want your help,’ she spits. ‘I know what’s going on.’
‘You want to die out here instead?’ I snap, dragging her back a step.
‘We’re all dead anyway.’ Her eyes are wide – betrayal, fury, heartbreak.
‘No, we’re not!’
‘Yes we are! I don’t trust you.’
‘I’m not asking you to,’ I breathe, ‘I’m just asking you to move.’ This time when I yank her, she doesn’t fight as hard. Maybe it’s the desperation in my voice. Maybe it’s the distant crack of a rifle echoing through the trees, or maybe the familiar high-pitched and child-like voice that sounds sweet on the surface but is stripped of any soul. The words echo through the forest – it doesn’t change tone. Doesn’t scream. Never flinches. The last time I heard that voice it was yelling, ‘GREEN LIGHT,’ sweet, high and hollow.
‘ATTENTION ALL PLAYERS’ the voice bursts from towering speakers, broadcasting throughout thecoto. My hand finds Stella’s, she’s stumbling forward, eyes wide, shoes scuffing against the terrain as I pull her towards the Warren’s mouth. ‘We have to go, now!’ I growl. She doesn’t argue, doesn’t ask. She just runs. Tethered to me like a lifeline unravelling at full speed, fraying with each step. I can see the Rabbit Warren, half swallowed by shadow. Inside, the air curdles – it’s colder, heavier, and thick with silence. Behind us, the siren screams through the trees. Not a warning, a countdown like the ticking arm of a doomsday clock.
