The Hunter (Boston Belles 1)

My calves burned, my quads quivered, and tears blurred my vision. I stumbled over a thick log hidden by autumn leaves, flying to the ground, headfirst.

Mud filled my face, and my knees hit something hard. The hot, wet pain of a deep scrape and fresh blood sliced through my leg.

I coughed the dirt out of my mouth, but it clung to my tongue. My palms burned from trying—and failing—to soften the fall. Quickly, I gathered my limbs, the way you do scattered belongings, and stood up on shaky legs. I was about to turn around when I felt the tip of an arrow pressing against my spine. The person behind it, holding the bow and arrow, cornered me against an oak tree. My face was to the trunk. I was so scared I couldn’t breathe.

“He was my everything,” I heard her say, and my heart lurched and twisted, coiling into itself in dozens of knots that made it almost impossible for it to beat. Lana Alder had a small, jarring voice and a faint Swiss accent. “My uncle gave him to me when I moved here from Zurich. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t speak the language. It was just Spot and me. He was my best friend. You took away my best friend. I have no one now.”

She dug the arrow into my back. Even if she released it from her bow, she still wouldn’t have enough momentum to kill me. But she could put me in a wheelchair. Mom and Dad had made me watch a lot of documentaries about archery and the danger of it before they let me practice.

And you went and let people blindfold you and killed a dog.

I wanted to choke on the cold, damp mud still in my mouth. It tasted salty, bitter, and ashen. It began to rain, but the woods were so thick with trees, I barely felt it on my skin. The scent of petrichor rose to my nostrils, and for the first time since I was born, I wished I were dead.

Mom’s voice called for me again. Dad’s, too.

“I’m sorry,” I finally managed to croak. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see him. I was blindfolded. I had no idea. I didn’t… I couldn’t…”

What made things worse was I’d heard Lana had only agreed to come from New Mexico to camp in Massachusetts if she could bring Spot with her. That’s how much she wanted him here. They’d had to issue a bunch of permits for the mutt to walk around on the premises. I guessed whoever took care of him wasn’t paying enough attention.

My body felt stiff, like a salt statue, hard but easily dissolved. I was going to lurch and throw up the minute the shock subsided. My mother’s voice grew near. I knew she’d find me. We had this thing between us—one not all children had with their parents. It was a connection that felt like a part of me was still in her womb. We could sense each other from miles away. Every time Mom and I hugged, we called it recharging. We plastered our stomachs together in bed and said Bzzzz the way the phone did when you plugged it in. Then she’d tell me she was so glad I was her family, which was a beautiful thing to say, because it made me feel like she would have chosen me even if I weren’t hers.

Lana didn’t have a choice.

She didn’t have a mother, either. Her parents had died in a car accident, and her only relative in the world had agreed to take her reluctantly, because she came with a healthy sum of money and assets.

Lana lived with her uncle and his much younger girlfriend, the one Dad said had enough plastic surgery for three desperate housewives of Orange County.

Tears began to leak from my eyes. I never cried.

“I hate you,” Lana whispered softly into my ear. “I hate you, Sailor Brennan. I don’t even like archery all that much. I came here because my uncle wanted to take Miss Deidre on a vacation in the Cook Islands and thought it would be a good opportunity to throw me somewhere where other people could watch over me. But I promise you, now I will make it my mission to take what is yours.”

I thought about all the times she’d called me ugly this weekend, said my face put her in a bad mood. And I realized she didn’t think it was an accident. Nothing could make her believe it was. She thought I’d deliberately taken away the thing closest to her heart as a part of a game, and now I had to pay.

“You want to be an archer? I will become a better one. You get a pet? I’ll kill it. A boyfriend? I will steal him. Whatever you acquire in life, Sailor, I will take it from you. Because you took something from me.”