Stray by Rachael Craw

kitchen; if she’s the Warden who came to the Gallaghers’ a couple of months ago, it’s my only hope of hiding my signal from her. There’s no way I can be sure what kind of sensitivity the others have – I’ll have to be quick, quiet, lucky.
    Springing to my feet, I scan the room for anything I can take with me that might be valuable later. My parka hangs by the back door downstairs. Knives and guns sit locked in Miriam’s hidden training room. Even my phone lies useless on the kitchen counter. I shake my head and snatch my backpack from the bottom of the wardrobe, a numb-fingered rummage for my wallet, a small burst of relief when I find it. On tiptoes, to lessen the sound of urgency in my steps, I hurry to the dresser and jam clean underwear and clothes into the guts of my bag. I wrench the zip and sling it on my back.
    Coming to the window, I cringe at the geriatric latch and swollen wooden frame that sticks fast in the damp. I anticipate the painful screech that will follow when I open it.
So much for quiet
. The garden spreads out three storeys below me thanks to the sloping yard and basement. I could break up the distance by landing on the back steps to the kitchen. Perhaps I could offer the shocked Affinity agents a friendly wave before bolting. They’ll hear the window and know instantly I’m trying to get away. Whatever happens, it will be a chase. My best bet is to clear the steps and land, a crunch of bones, in the yard and not look back.
    With sick churning in my gut, I slip my fingers beneath the latch, count to three as a final stall, then haul upwards. The screech, the slam of the lower sash crashing into the frame above, a shower of paint chips. I clamber, leg, shoulder, head, leg. A shout echoes from the kitchen. I jump. A blast of freezing air. Hungry gravity. A stone-hard landing that rattles my teeth, my skull. Fire in my joints. I’m up and running. I hear the kitchen door slam open and a male voice booms, “Evangeline!”
    The slippery mat of dead leaves makes it hard to gain good footing but the slope gives me momentum. Miriam’s leafy backyard blends with the fenceless wild. I skid my way into the Border River Reserve, swatting bracken and hurdling fallen branches, my pack slapping my back with each stride. Go, go, go! It’s a few hundred yards to the river, the icy breath of it chilling my lungs. The roar of fast water grows louder as I tear through the wood. Moss, mud and pungent rot, wet air, a heavy sky. Electrified by adrenaline, my senses adjust as I move faster and faster, reflexes, vision, judging distance, rapid-fire calculations for the placement of my feet, a jump, a duck, a lunge left, then right and on.
    I sense them in the bandwidth, two then three. I picture the man with steel-blue eyes, the hostile twist of his mouth, the cool fierce gaze of the agent Jamie had called Benjamin and then the older guy with the accent whose look had withered me on the stairs. All of them powerfully built, experienced, trained, armed and coming for me. The sound of heavy footfalls grows behind me. My heart rides at the top of my throat. The ground slips steeply down towards gravelly banks. I know the terrain. I know this isn’t the narrowest part of the river. I’ve tried jumping it before and fallen short, dragged into the ferocious current and swept downstream. I break from the trees and to my left the blue-eyed agent bursts out onto the bank. I charge towards the river edge, visualising the leap skywards.
    The clatter of boots.
    “Wait!”
    With a grunt, I vault upwards, higher and farther than any previous attempt, propelled by fear and my cartwheeling arms.
    Behind me a gusty, “No shit!”
    And a muttered, “Great.”
    I land in the shallow water that sweeps the opposite bank. Somehow I stay upright, soaked to my thighs, and clamber up the slope, waterlogged sneakers filling with stones as the bank gives way beneath my feet. But I have new drive, a signal-free bandwidth, the large