Chapter 1573

“Belinda!” Lucas called after her, frustration and worry mingling in his voice. He instinctively took a step to follow, but she spun around and fixed him with a fierce glare. “Don’t even think about following me. We’ll cover more ground if we split up. Go another way and stop wasting time!”

Cornered by her determination, Lucas halted, his brows furrowed in helpless concern. “Be careful,” he said.

“All right!” she replied, waving the flashlight dismissively as she disappeared into the woods.

Lucas didn’t linger. With grim resolve, he turned and began searching in the opposite direction.

Belinda had a hunch about why Faye had ventured into the woods.

Lucas had spoken with Faye earlier that evening, and later, he had recounted the conversation to Belinda.

Something in his words, Belinda suspected, had stirred Faye’s emotions deeply enough to drive her to this desolate, shadow-cloaked place in the dead of night.

Whether she’d come here to clear her head or to get concern from them was uncertain.

But either way, they had to find Faye quickly.

Faye was, after all, Lucas’s niece.

And even if Belinda found many of her actions annoying, she didn’t wish harm on her.

“Faye… Faye!” Belinda called into the darkness, her voice echoing faintly through the eerie silence.

This forest was unsettling even in daylight; at night, it was a realm of shadows and silence. She couldn’t understand how Faye had dared to come here alone. She had to be completely out of her mind.

“Faye…” Belinda forged ahead, scanning the underbrush and flickering her flashlight across the gnarled trees and twisted vines, wholly unaware that danger was already creeping up behind her.

She reached into her pocket to check her phone, wanting to contact the others. But in that moment of distraction, a sudden, powerful shove struck her back.

“Ah!” The world turned sideways. Disoriented and helpless, Belinda tumbled down a steep slope, her flashlight and phone flying from her grip, illuminating the twisted vines along the slope as they fell.

At the base of the slope, her body came to a violent halt. Her forehead collided with a jagged stone. Everything went dark for her.

At that moment, Lucas, far away, felt a sudden jolt of worry.

A strange sensation gripped his chest, tightening like a vice.

He couldn’t explain it; he just felt an overwhelming sense that something was wrong.

He reached for his phone, heart racing, and immediately dialed Belinda’s number.

Belinda’s phone, lying on the ground, rang, but its owner was nowhere to be found.

Then footsteps approached.