I exhale and then duck low, struggling to crawl with my arms bound by the cuffs. I don’t make it nearly as far as I want, rolling over and sitting up with my back against another tombstone.

“Does it bother you that she killed herself?” he asks, moving slowly across the grass, gun held ready, clasped in both of his hairy hands. I close my eyes. “Left you here to suffer the way she did? What sort of big sister does something like that?”

Count to three and then keep going. You can do this. You’ve got this.

I open my eyes again and roll onto my belly, crawling closer to Neil. He’s just in front of and to the right of me, and I know I only have a few precious seconds to find a new hiding spot before he turns and sees me.

There’s a large tomb on my left that I head for, putting my back up against it just before I hear Neil pause. He’s listening for any sound, any clue.

“When I find you,” he tells me, his voice thick with lust. I can hear him smacking his lips in anticipation. “I’m going to shoot you in the leg, and then play with you until you stop screaming. If you’re a real good girl then I’ll take you to the hospital and you can tell them how your boyfriend’s gang jumped and killed your vice principal and then turned their sights on you. This doesn’t have to end in your death, Bernie. It could be fun for both of us.”

Fuck you, I think, feeling my eyes sting with angry tears. The next chance I get, I’m going to kill you, consequences be damned. Neil Pence’s expiration date has come and gone.

I hear him start to walk away and get ready to move again.

“Boo,” Neil growls, appearing from the opposite side of the mausoleum. Luckily, I have quick fucking reactionary commands. Turning, I lean back and then kick up as hard as I can with both feet, nailing Neil in the balls. He fires the gun into the air as he howls with pain and I struggle to my feet.

I barely make it three steps before he’s on me, grabbing me by the hair and shoving my head as hard as he can into the side of an obelisk. Stars fill my vision as my knees buckle and Neil follows me down to the grassy ground.

He’s struggling to control me with one hand and fire the gun with the other, so I take advantage of him being off-balance to turn over. Better to be on my back than my belly. I bend my knees, keeping my legs together so that when I use them to push at him, I have more power.

My boots hit the arm holding the gun, sending the pistol flying.

“Fucking cunt,” Neil snarls, grabbing my legs with one arm and swinging at my face with the other. He manages to crack me across the cheek, but I shove him off of me, scooting back to put space between us. He chooses to go for his gun as I get to my feet and start running.

Another gunshot explodes the grave on my right as I sprint with everything I have and disappear around the side of another mausoleum. As soon as I’m out of sight, I start looking for somewhere else to hide.

I have seconds, at best.

There’s a huge hole not far from me. It’s very clearly a grave awaiting a body.

The idea of crawling into it makes me sick, but I have nowhere else to go. I’m trapped between the mausoleum and the fence. The thing is, once I get down there, I won’t be able to get out. I discard the idea and decide to run for it.

“I see you,” Neil calls out, firing his gun at me again. I trip and fall then, struggling to catch myself with the cuffs on. I go down hard, certain that this is it, that I’m done for. But when I roll over and sit up, I see Neil replacing the magazine on his gun. That gives me just enough time to crawl behind another grave.

It’s not much help though because he saw me.

He knows where I am.

I’m panting like crazy as I sit up, glancing around the tombstone to see him coming straight for me.

This is it.

My last chance.

I wait for Neil to get close. I don’t expect him to shoot the gravestone I’m hiding behind, and I cry out as bits of cement hit me like projectiles. Oddly enough, the move works out for the best. I use the rush of adrenaline, the cloud of dust, and the echo of the gunshot to shove up to my feet and slip around the other side of the tombstone.

For the briefest of seconds, I’m behind Neil.

I throw my handcuffed arms around his neck as he curses at me, slamming his back against another statue and crushing me against it. The move knocks the breath right out of me.

He gags as I hang from him like a noose, using my bodyweight to put stress on his airway. Neil collapses to the grass and rolls to his back, sandwiching me between his body and the ground. He throws his elbow back over and over again, battering my ribs. After a moment, he stops, and then I realize that he’s fumbling with something at his belt.

The next thing I know, he’s shoving a key into the handcuffs and the right side comes undone.

Neil turns on me as I move to back up, the cuffs hanging from my left hand, the one with the HAVOC tattoo. He tackles me into the grass, getting me underneath him, putting gravity on his side. His forearm goes into my throat, cutting my air off.

“You like that, Bernadette?” he growls out, voice husky from being choked. Spittle flicks my cheeks as I writhe, desperate for air, my nails gouging his forearms bloody, even through the sleeve of his uniform. “Does that turn you on?” Neil leans down and kisses me, his stubble scraping my face as I kick and flail.

One of my knees manages to slip between his legs, and I nail him in the balls for a second time. As soon as I get some space to move, I launch myself forward, wrapping my hands around his neck like I did with Oscar.

He even falls backward, letting me get the upper hand.

I squeeze harder, putting every ounce of my weight into trying to choke him. There’s no malice in me right now however, no joy at seeing him suffer. This is purely about survival. For me to escape this place alive, I have to kill the step-thing.

“And here we thought you’d be needing some help,” Hael says from beside me. I glance up just in time to see his boot come down on Neil’s face. Blood sprays as my stepfather screams, and I’m lifted up under the armpits by gentle hands.

Callum tucks me under his chin, wrapping his arms around me.

The relief I feel in that moment nearly sends me to my knees.

“Ah, Neil,” Vic says, appearing on my stepfather’s other side. “You got started without us.”

Aaron and Hael haul Neil to his feet and slam his back against the side of a crumbling stone crypt while Oscar steps forward with his revolver in hand. He keeps it trained on Neil as my stepfather’s shit-brown eyes flick between the boys like he can’t possibly understand how they got here.

Frankly, I don’t know how they did, just that I knew they would.

“How the fuck did you get out of the station?” the Thing snarls as I cuddle into Callum. I don’t want Neil to see how scared I really was, how vulnerable I felt, like a child all over again. Cal just squeezes me close, enveloping me in his scent and his hoodie and his eternal calm, like a dark sea under a full moon. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, well,” Vic says, shrugging. “We are, and just in time to see our girl strangle the life out of you.” He laughs again and moves forward, getting up close and personal with Neil as Hael and Aaron hold him back. “To be honest with you, officer, you’d have been lucky if Bernie had strangled you. We have something much darker in mind.” Victor works his jaw for a moment, like he’s thinking, and then hauls back to punch Neil in the face.