Page 136 of Hide And Seek

“Anyway… Peter asked if I’d be interested in helping with the investigation,” I said. “The idea was for me to work here over the summer and quietly dig around. Watch people. Listen. See if any of the counselors slipped up or revealed something they weren’t supposed to.”

“Off the books, I presume?”

“Very,” I said dryly. “The university has absolutely no idea I’m doing this. And ethically speaking, it’s pretty questionable.”

“No shit.” Rhys cocked his head, frowning. “So what did you find out?”

A low, humorless laugh escaped me. “Well, I wasn’t able to suss out many details, considering you shut the camp down after three days so you could start murdering people,” I said. “I mean… thatwasyou, right? The environmental assessment report?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it was fake. I set it up.”

“Thought so.” I exhaled slowly. “Anyway, I overheard Delia and Sutton talking on the second day, and there was enough there to make me suspicious. Not enough to prove anything. Just enough to make me think the accidental drowning story didn’t fully add up.”

“And then?”

“Then last night happened,” I muttered, stomach tightening at the memory. “I overheard Sutton and Grace talking, and they outright said that they killed Carly. Chris and Jensen obviously knew about it too. So then I realized it wasn’t just counselor negligence, like Peter and the Martins assumed. It was murder, and all the Legacies were involved. Except you.”

“That’s why those four were chasing you last night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. They realized I overheard them, and they wanted to kill me to keep it covered up.”

Rhys nodded slowly. “I figured that’s what happened,” he said, eyes flashing. “When I heard you screaming for help and saw them going after you.”

“Right.” I let out a heavy sigh. “Anyway… that’s it. I’ve told you everything I know.”

“So now it’s my turn, huh?”

“Yes.” I nodded slowly. “You said you’d give me some answers.”

Rhys’s brows lifted. “Luckily for you, I have all the answers you came here looking for. I know exactly who killed Carly, and I know exactly why they did it, too.” He paused, gaze holding mine. “And you'll never believe it in a million fucking years.”

27

Rhys turnedand crossed the room before dragging one of the chairs away from the table. He spun it around and sat astride it a couple of feet from me, forearms resting across the back as he studied me.

“It’s a long story,” he said, one brow lifting slightly. “You don’t have anywhere else you need to be right now, do you?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” I said in a low voice. “Just tell me what you know.”

For once, he didn’t answer immediately. Instead he hesitated, gaze drifting briefly toward the window like he was trying to figure out where the story actually started.

“I knew something was off with the other Legacies after last summer,” he finally said. “They were all acting weird. At first I figured they were just shaken up, which seemed fair enough considering a twelve-year-old girl drowned here. But after a while I realized it was more than grief or shock.”

“How?”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You know the camp group chat?”

“The Legacy-only one, you mean?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That chat used to be nonstop. It was basically the main way we all stayed in touch during the off-season. People sent memes, made plans, posted pictures, bitched about classes, drunk-texted at three in the morning. Whatever. There were probably thirty or forty messages a day in there.”

“And that changed?”

“Yeah. Suddenly there were barely any messages.” His brows furrowed. “Not dead silence, but enough that it stood out. Maybe three or four messages a day. Sometimes less. And it stayed like that for months.”

I nodded slowly.

“The people I was closest to still talked to me one-on-one, so I didn’t think I was being iced out of the group,” Rhys continued. “I figured maybe everyone was just busy, seeing as most of us were in our final year at college. But then one day I was hanging out with some of the guys, and I happened to glance at Knox’s phone screen.”