CHAPTER 44
Steadman sagged against a rough-barked pine, blood seeping warm between his fingers as he pressed a palm against the wound in his chest. Pain speared through him, sending streaks of agony racing along his legs, weakening his knees so that when he collapsed, sliding down the trunk of the tree to rest on the prickling needles, the Remington lodged beneath him, it wasn’t all pretense.
But it wasn’t all genuine feebleness, either.
He stared at the Slasher, the man who’d done this to him, crouched six feet away, cradling his own bleeding injury—a damaged left hand—and clutching a blade in his good fist. A knit beanie covered the top of his head and his face was half-hidden behind the filter mask he wore so that Steadman couldn’t see his expression. But his body language suggested
