The stench of animals, of excrement, and the brittle hay beneath her, added to Hannah's sour mood.
Her eye swollen, her stitches burning, her entire body aching for rest, Hannah's cursing under her breath to herself. The sirens earlier, apparently a false alarm, but Hannah knew better. Nothing that came as an official word from Russell was ever the whole truth, and sometimes, never really the truth at all.
It kept her on edge, thinking the dead now hunted for her too among the living. Nick, Dalton, and Fisher, moved her here to hide her from the guard. It seemed she now had friends to share in her paranoia regarding Russell. A fact in which, kept Hannah holding onto a positive outlook should Russell try to have her killed tomorrow.
Ethan, she's told, is dead. Though, in her heart, she knows it's just another lie. One, meant to drive the final nail in her coffin when the jury makes their verdict against her tomorrow.
Huddling in the tight-woven blanket, Hannah struggles to keep off the coming chill of winter. She waits in the dark, for their return. As shadows move outside the enclosure, Hannah hitches her breath. Through the cracks in the wood, she watches them. Two men from the guard, make their way into the farmhouse where five minutes ago, she'd rather be than here in this drafty barn.
She watches as the lights for the room facing her way turns on, then off. They search for her, calling out that rooms are cleared. The wave of a shotgun's barrel reveals through the window pane with every sharp pivot they make.
Her busted lower lip trembles. The soft cloud that escapes from her mouth, longer, yet in greater space to her last, holds entirely when they exit the farmhouse. Sinking further into her blanket and refraining from making the slightest movement, she's waiting for them among the goats and cows that grunt and shift.
When they pay the barn no mind and pass over, she still waits in thinking they've remembered to come back and check the barn. Minutes, she thinks, must have turned into hours. Her eyes transfixed on the double doors down the opposite end of the barn, they strain in her terror.
As they finally come to open, Hannah scrambles back as far as she can out of sight. Clinging onto the gun Nick promised her, she's not sure she can use it with the tangle of blankets and her fear of making her presence known. As the lone figure appears, Hannah faces her stalker to shoot him dead.
"Hannah! It's me...it's Dalton!"
Clutching onto the gun, unsure of her reality, the kind face of Dalton shifts the weapon out of her hand.
Burying her face into her hands, she wants to cry, or to scream, but ushers nothing but silence in the wake of her stress.
His hand finds her shoulder, moving along her back, till she's pulled into a gentle embrace. Though she doesn't want to give into her hopelessness, to her grief of her brother and for herself, it's in Dalton's arms that she falls apart, at last.
His warmth touching her deeper than any blanket, or the satisfaction of revenge, Hannah's rage flowed out in the only way it never had.
Though Dalton usually knew the right thing to say, he also knew that sometimes silence, was just as helpful.
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A/N: The next chapter is going to be a long one! Please don't forget to vote and to add this story to your library if you are enjoying it so far!