Page 70 of Haunt Me

The pain is white and immediate. I curl around it, unable to stop the sound that tears from my throat.

“Enough,” Slate says. “We were told alive.”

“Alive doesn’t mean comfortable.”

Slate crouches beside me. “You know how long we’ve been waiting for this?”

I turn my head toward the river.

The world doubles, then corrects itself.

“Do it here.”

He studies me. “What?”

“If you’re going to kill me, do it here.”

A grin spreads slowly across his ruined face. “You think you get to choose?”

I watch the opposite bank. “She’ll know where to find me.”

The grin disappears, and something like uncertainty passes through his eyes. Then he looks at the men around us and laughs. “You hear that? He thinks his dead bitch is coming for him.”

My body surges upward.

I don’t get far before Slate’s fist connects with my jaw.

The river turns sideways.

Someone binds my wrists behind my back. Plastic cuts into my skin as the tie tightens. They drag me to my feet, but my legs don’t cooperate.

I search the trees.

Once.

Twice.

There. Between two trunks on the opposite bank. A woman. She’s watching.

“Raven.”

No one answers.

I keep my eyes on her even as hands haul me backward. She doesn’t disappear this time.

Her face is pale against the gathering dusk. Her hair moves softly around her shoulders. She lifts one hand and presses it to her heart. The way she did on mine the last time I saw her alive enough to speak.

I pull against the men holding me. “Wait.”

Slate laughs behind me.

“She’s there.”

“Sure she is.”

“She’s right there.”

My boots drag through the snow.