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I jumped, my heart kicking into overdrive. “What?” My eyes swung nervously around the trail, and then over my shoulder, but the only thing I saw was a couple walking their dog twenty feet behind us, and then a gaggle of fast-marching older women in front of us.
“You went viral!” He pulled his phone out of his coat pocket. “Which you would know if you had social media like a civilized person. I totally forgot to tell you.”
I wasn’t a civilized person. I was a rabbit on the run—a cheeky hare looking for burrow after burrow and expecting a ghost to show up over her shoulder at any moment. I couldn’t afford to have social media in case my parents used it to track me. I let out a sigh, unwinding the tension in my shoulders that had snapped me tight like a twist mop. “Jesus, Dylan, you scared me. What do you mean ‘viral?’ How can I go viral if I don’t have social media?”
“Because everyone else has social media.” He swiped around in his apps until he found the video he was looking for. “And you like to make a spectacle of yourself.”
The video, only fifteen seconds long, had been cut with pop music in the background, and it showed me lifting thirteen beer steins off a counter and rounding the customer line with a shit-eating grin on my face. I stopped in the middle of the trail, and my heart went from double-time to subzero frozen. I could practically hear it crack as it iced over. “Wha—what platform is this?”
“TikTok,” Dylan said, like that was obvious. I didn’t know much about the platform because I hadn’t used it before I went on the run. But the video had almost 700,000 likes and 40,000 shares.
My mouth went dry. This was bad. Really bad. “When was this posted?” I asked, grabbing the phone from him and tapping around on the video and comments.
Dylan let out a nervous laugh. “Dude, what’s wrong? I thought you’d be stoked.”
“I am not stoked,” I replied evenly, scrolling through comments and hoping to God this hadn’t gotten into the wrong hands. “I’m freaking out. It was posted a week ago?” I screeched.
Beth looked over my shoulder at the clip. “You do look like a badass, though. I have to hand it to you.”
“Oh my God,” I gusted out. My breath felt thin, like I was sucking in the dredges of oxygen at the top of the stratosphere. “I can’t… I have to go.”
“Go?” Dylan took his phone back from me. “Matt, what’s going on?”
My parents had to have seen it. Surely, they had people watching, monitoring social media channels and keeping an eye out for any sign of me. If a video of mine had gone viral, then there was a good chance it had gotten shared to other platforms. And if it had been a week ago, I might already be too late. I should have gotten a gun. Or a taser. Or even pepper spray for God’s sake, but I had assumed I was hidden here. And weapons had always scared me.
Especially knives. I shuddered, remembering the cold flat of a hunting knife on my cheek, how it had stung my heated skin and reminded me of my vulnerability. Shaking my head, I backed up a few steps. “Guys, I—I need to make a call home.”
“To your mom?” Beth asked, her forehead crinkling in surprise. I’d told her a little bit of the truth. I’d told her about my overbearing parents and their callous control of my life back home.
I shook my head. “To my—my sister. I need to check in.” I tried to remember if I’d actually told either of them that I was an only child.
Dylan’s bushy brows pulled together. “Babes. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The blood drained from my face to my toes. I made a choking sound and turned around on the path. “I’ll be at the house, Beth!” I left them, and my pink sneakers crunched over hard-packed dirt as I hurried back down the trail. The river rushed in a soothing cadence, like it wanted me to relax and be one with nature.
But I didn’t want to relax. I wanted to run. I wanted to bolt like the bunny ears on my gray hoodie suggested I should. I’d bought this damn hoodie after my last encounter with Ghost, euphoric on success and tickled to death over having escaped him in my adorable pajama set while he’d held all the cards. I reached up and tugged on one of the gray, jersey fabric ears. I had to stop wearing these things. I didn’t want to be the prey on the run anymore. I had to find a way to end this insanity permanently. I dug around in my jeans pocket, and then I fished out a piece of bubblegum. Gum calmed my nerves and gave all my hyperactive energy somewhere to go. I chewed it furiously, scanning the abandoned trail for any sign of a threat.
Like there would be a threat here. I knew it was paranoid, but I couldn’t help but assume there would be. A cold wind shushed through the autumn trees, rattling red maple and bright yellow birch leaves. I folded my arms across my chest, pinching the gum between my teeth and snapping it loudly.
Footsteps rustled behind me, like feet swishing through dead leaves. I turned just in time to find a man emerging from the forest to my left, off the path and down a slight hill. I caught a flash of premature gray at his temples, and then my gaze hooked on a pair of periwinkle blue eyes. Ghost smiled a slow and crooked smile. “Hey there, Bunny.”
For the first time since meeting Mattie, I saw a flash of fear in her eyes. The monster inside of me snarled happily. Got you, little rabbit.
Her back straightened, her body rotating to face me, and then like magic, the fear vanished. Indolent apathy shuttered over her features, and she slid her hands into the front pocket of her bunny-ear hoodie. This time, her sweatshirt had a cottontail at the back and the words “fluff you” in cursive along the front. She faced me with zero traces of worry on her beautiful face. “Do I know you?”
A smile twitched at the corners of my mouth. “Likely not. You haven’t faced consequences a day in your life.”
“Oh, is that what you are?” She snapped her gum loudly between her teeth. “I thought you were someone’s lost grandpa.”
I took a step toward her, and to my amusement, she didn’t so much as flinch. “My gray hair isn’t going to stop me from catching you if you run, Bunny. But you’re not going to run, are you?” I took another step her way, and that time, I saw her legs tense. She was definitely going to run.
“Why would I do that?” she asked, apparently unconcerned.
“I don’t know,” I challenged softly. “Why would you?”
She took a step back, lazy and unhurried. “The word ‘zip ties’ comes to mind.”
“So, you do recognize me,” I grinned wolfishly. I matched her pace for pace as she backed away slowly, leaving the trail and heading into the sparse tree line that bordered the river. It was a futile, if half-assed effort. She had nowhere to go, and I’d made sure there were no hikers near us.
