Page 12 of Hide And Seek

“Not really,” I said, trying to ignore the way my pulse was still racing from the spicy scent of Rhys’s cologne along with the memory of his body pressed to my side.

The conversation picked back up easily, and Jesse was in the middle of a story about a ropes course incident from the previous summer when I caught something in my peripheral vision.

Sutton.

She was still on the Legacy side of the fire, but something about her posture had shifted. She wasn't looking at anyone in her own group anymore. Instead, she was looking across the fire with a cold glare etched on her pretty face. It was aimed right at me.

Her eyes moved over to Rhys, who had resettled into his spot with a fresh beer. Then her gaze skated back to me again, eyes still filled with cold anger.

Interesting.

Perhaps they'd dated or hooked up at some point, and she was jealous of him giving any other girl attention. Or maybe they were hooking up right now. Either way, it was none of my business. I had enough to keep track of without adding Legacy relationship dynamics to the list.

I turned back to listen to Jesse's story, and the conversation drifted the way late-night conversations do, following no particular logic, one thread picked up as another was dropped.

More beer was eventually retrieved from the cooler someone had dragged out from somewhere. I'd lost track of the logistics of the evening by this point, everything having taken on the slightly blurred quality of a night that was going well.

I pulled my jacket tighter against the drop in temperature and looked up through the gap in the canopy overhead. There was no light pollution out here in this part of the Adirondacks, so the stars blazed brightly, entire constellations popping in the expanse. I'd grown up under skies like this in Montana, and I’d missed it a lot while living in the big city over the last few years.

Another thirty minutes slipped by. I was in the middle of eating my fourth s'more when a scream cut through the night.

Sharp. Female. Coming from the path that led back to camp.

For a second, nobody moved as we all processed what we'd just heard.

The woods around us were silent and dark. And then, from somewhere in that darkness, was a second scream.

3

Nobody told us to run.Nobody needed to.

We were already moving, the whole group of counselors surging toward the path in a collective lurch that sent someone's beer can spinning off a log and into the dirt. The fire shrank behind us as we plunged into the darkness, phones out, flashlight beams cutting erratic white slashes through the dark.

The screaming had stopped, which was in some ways worse than if it had continued.

“Hello?” Jesse called out ahead of me. “Who is that? Are you okay?”

“I think it’s Noura!” someone else shouted.

We came around the bend where the path widened into a small clearing, and that was where we found her.

Noura was standing completely still in the middle of the path, arms held slightly away from her body in a rigid posture. In the combined beam of half a dozen phone flashlights, the substance coating her hair and the front of her shirt was dark and unmistakably red.

“Oh my god.” Wren pushed forward. “What happened?”

“It’s okay. I-I'm not hurt.” Noura’s voice was shaky. “I was walking up to use the bathroom and something… I don’t know. I guess there was some sort of wire or rope? I must’ve caught it with my foot and then—” She gestured at herself. “A bucket of blood dropped on me. But… that’s not all.”

She pointed to her right.

I followed the beam of the nearest flashlight as it climbed the trunk of a towering tree, and a cold knot formed in my stomach.

A knife had been driven into the wood, pinning a single sheet of paper beneath it. Something had been written on it in the same red liquid splashed across Noura's clothes, the letters large and deliberate.

I KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED LAST YEAR.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then, from somewhere at the back of the group, came a sound I hadn't expected.

A laugh.