Page 130 of Hide And Seek

“What?”

“Think about it. Whoever he is, he’s eventually gonna need a fall guy, right? Somebody to pin everything on so he can disappear without anyone looking twice at him.”

“I… never really thought about that,” Jasmine admitted. “But yeah. I guess that makes sense.”

Rhys let out a humorless laugh. “Pretty sure that somebody’s me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I’m the most convenient suspect,” Rhys said. “My family owns Northgate, so if anyone here could figure out how to jam all the network signals around camp, it’d probably be me, right?”

“Yeah,” Jasmine murmured. “I guess.”

“Also, I’m a fourth-year engineering student, so if somebody starts asking who could rig up harpoon traps or explosives in the river…” He trailed off for a second before finishing quietly. “Again. Me.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“It’s not just that.” Rhys sighed, and I could picture him dragging a hand through his hair like he was genuinely stressed. “The night Sloane and Reid died, I left the fire not long after they did. I just wanted to go to my cabin and chill out for a while, because I wasn’t in the mood to socialize. But who the fuck’s going to believe that when I’m the only one here with no alibi for those couple of hours?”

This time, Jasmine didn’t answer straight away, and I knew exactly why. Because she’d already heard this theory before. Fromme.

“That’s true too,” she finally said in a tentative tone.

“Obviously anyone with decent technical skills and access to Google could figure out how to jam signals or rig traps,”Rhys continued. “But nobody’s going to think about it like that. They’re just going to look at me and decide it fits. Aren’t they?”

“Yeah, you’d probably be a suspect,” Jasmine said.

Rhys sighed again. “I’ve been thinking about what happens if I reveal I’m alive, and I realized I’m basically fucked no matter what I do.” He let out a short, brittle laugh. “The others might not believe me when I explain this fake death plan. Even with you backing me up, they could just decide I manipulated you, and that I’m actually the killer.”

He paused for a second before adding, “Then all it takes is one paranoid idiot sticking a knife in my back while I’m not looking and convincing themselves it was self-defense.”

“That could definitely happen,” Jasmine muttered.

“And if it did?” Rhys said. “I’d bet a million dollars that the murders would suddenly stop.”

Jasmine immediately caught on. “Because then everyone would think it reallywasyou,” she said. “The killings stopped the second you died, so that ‘proves’ you were the killer all along.”

“Exactly.” Rhys snapped his fingers. “Which means if I show myself to the group, there’s a high chance I die. But if I stay hidden, there’s two other possible outcomes, and they’re both equally shitty.”

“What are they?”

“The first is that the killer already knows where I am and eventually comes here to kill me,” he said. “If that happens, he’ll probably stage it as a suicide. Maybe even leave behind some fake confession note claiming I did everything.”

“And the second possibility?”

“If I manage to avoid him and survive long enough for the police to finally show up… I’ll get arrested because I’ve already been set up as the perfect fall guy.” Another bitter laugh escaped him. “So basically I’m triple fucked.”

“Yeah,” Jasmine said after a moment. “I see what you mean.”

Silence lingered briefly before she spoke again, slower this time.

“Rhys… I have to be honest with you about something.”

“What?”

“All that stuff you just said about looking suspicious…” She hesitated. “Alissa and I talked about that already. We actually had a theory that it might be you.”

Rhys groaned softly. “See? I fucking knew it,” he said. “I’m being set up. I look guilty as hell.”