Chapter 70 Hunted

Chapter 70 Hunted
Beatris

I ran. Not toward the estate. Away from it. Away from Agnes's house, away from the lane, away from the voice that had already found me.

The streets blurred past. My slippers slapped against cobblestones. The oversized trousers caught against my legs with every stride, but I did not stop to fix them.

Somewhere behind me, footsteps followed.

I turned a corner. Then another. A narrow alley opened between two buildings and I took it without thinking, shoving past a stack of crates and a broken cart.

How did they know so fast?

The question burned through me with every step. I had been careful. I had dressed differently. I had spoken to only one person.

Yet they had still found me before I could even finish speaking. Maybe Alexander didn't know yet.

The thought came desperate and thin. Maybe the servants had noticed I was gone and sent someone. Maybe Alexander was still away. Maybe this was only the town acting on its own fear.

Please. Please let him not know.

I kept running.

The alley opened onto a wider road. Trees lined the edge of it, and beyond them I could see open ground, fields, maybe, or a path leading out of the town entirely.

Hope surged through me so sharply it hurt. If I could just reach those trees… A sharp whistle cut through the air behind me.

I didn't look back.

My legs burned. My breath tore through my throat in ragged, desperate pulls. The scarf had slipped from my face, but I didn't care anymore.

Then I heard the engine. My heart dropped. A black car turned onto the road ahead of me, moving fast, cutting off the path toward the trees.

Alexander's car. The same one. He's back. The thought hit me like a fist.
The car stopped. The door opened. Two men stepped out, calm, unhurried, blocking the road ahead.

I skidded to a stop.

For one terrible second I considered turning back. Running the other way. Finding another route.

Then I heard the footsteps behind me slow to a walk. They had been walking, not running. Because they had already known where I would end up.

My chest caved.

I turned sharply to the left and threw myself toward the nearest gap between buildings, half stumbling, half running, my vision blurring with tears I hadn't realized had started.

My foot caught something. A loose stone. A crack in the ground. It didn't matter. The world tilted. I hit the ground hard.

Pain exploded through my knees first, then my palms, then the side of my face as the stone tore into it. Something warm and wet spread across my chin and I tasted copper.

Blood.

I tried to push myself up. A hand caught my arm.

I fought it on instinct, twisting, pulling, but another hand followed, then another, and then I was being lifted from the ground with the same calm efficiency they had used to chase me.

"Let go of me!" I screamed.

No one answered. They carried me toward the car.
I kicked. I clawed. I screamed until my throat burned raw, but the men holding me did not flinch, did not slow, did not care.

The car door was already open. I was placed inside like something broken being packed away.

I scrambled toward the other door at once, but it was locked. I hit the window hard enough to make my bruised hand scream.

The driver did not turn around. He was not in the car. The realization settled into me slowly.
Alexander was not here. He had sent the car. Sent the men. Sent the town after me like dogs after a rabbit.

But he was not in it. Which meant he was waiting.

The car pulled away from the curb and I slumped back against the seat, bleeding and trembling, pressing one hand against the cut on my face.

The drive back to Crimson Hill passed in silence.
I did not speak. Did not cry. Did not move except to breathe.

The blood dried against my chin and my palms and the collar of the borrowed shirt. My knees throbbed. My face stung where the stone had torn the skin.

None of it mattered.

Because when the car finally rolled through the gates of Crimson Hill and stopped before the front steps, I looked up.

And Alexander was standing in the doorway. He was already there. Waiting. The look on his face drove every other thought out of me.

Pure anger.

Not the controlled, measured kind he wore when he was displeased. This was different. Raw. The kind of fury that lived behind his eyes and only surfaced when something had genuinely shaken him.

My breath stopped. I could not move. The driver opened the door, and the cool evening air struck my bleeding face.

"Please," I whispered before I had even stepped out.

I didn't know who I was begging.

"Please."

I stepped onto the gravel and my knees nearly gave way beneath me. Tears spilled down my face, mixing with the blood still drying on my chin.

"I'm sorry." My voice broke. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Alexander said nothing.

He did not look at my injuries. Did not ask what happened. Did not acknowledge the blood or the torn clothes or the way I was shaking so badly I could barely stand.

He crossed the distance between us in three strides, grabbed my arm, and turned me toward the mansion.

His grip was hard enough to bruise.

He walked fast. Faster than I could keep up with. My feet stumbled against the steps, against the floorboards, against every threshold I was dragged through.

"Alexander, please…"

He did not answer.

Through the entrance hall. Past the servants who had stopped to watch with lowered eyes and tight mouths. Down the corridor toward the west wing.

My hip struck the corner of a table. I gasped but he did not slow. 
By the time we reached my room, my arm had gone numb from his grip and my voice had reduced to nothing but thin, broken breathing.

He shoved the door open. Then he shoved me inside. I stumbled forward, lost my footing, and fell.

My knees struck the floorboards first. My hands followed. Pain screamed through my already bruised body.

I stayed there, shaking, unable to rise. Then I looked up. And everything inside me went cold.
Catherine's journal lay open on the floor.

The pages were scattered. Some torn. Some crumpled, as though someone had gone through them quickly, violently, searching for something.

He had found it. I had forgotten to put it back under the bed.

After everything, after the trapdoor, after the tunnel, after Clara, I had taken it out and left it here like a fool. And now he knew.

He knew about Catherine. He knew what she had written. He knew I had been looking for answers in the words of a dead woman.

The door slammed shut behind me. I flinched hard enough to scrape my palms against the floor.

For a long moment, I did not move. I did not breathe. I stayed on my knees, bleeding and trembling, staring at the ruined pages scattered across the floorboards.

Then Alexander's voice came from behind me.
Low. Cold. Empty of everything I had ever mistaken for kindness.

"What else have you been hiding from me?"