Page 45 of Hide And Seek

Groups started drifting back toward the main grounds one by one, not because anyone had called it, but because there was nowhere left to look that didn’t feel pointless.

“Okay,” Jasmine eventually said, dragging a hand through her hair as she looked around at the rest of us. “I’m officially done opening cupboards that only contain cleaning supplies and disappointment.”

“Yeah,” Tamsin said. “We should probably start thinking about dinner. The scouting guys are gonna be starving when they get back.”

No one argued with that.

We made our way to the kitchen and quickly fell into something that almost resembled routine again. I found myself at one of the prep benches with Jasmine and Wren, chopping vegetables while Tamsin worked at the stove.

The first pair of scouts came back a few minutes after we were done.

Levi and Garrett.

They pushed through the dining hall doors looking dusty and overheated, their clothes clinging slightly with sweat, boots scuffed with dirt and pine needles.

“Well?” someone asked right away.

Levi shook his head, reaching for a bottle of water and downing half of it in one go. “We were assigned the southwest side,” he said once he could speak again. “We went miles out, just in case. Up and down the ridge, and then we cut through the lower trails. There’s nothing out there. No camps, no tracks, nothing that shouldn’t be.”

Garrett nodded in agreement. “If someone’s out there, they’re not anywhere we could see,” he said. He paused, peering around. “Anyone else back yet?”

“Nope. You’re the first. But you’re just in time for a hot meal.”

Both guys let out grateful grunts of acknowledgment and drifted further into the room, exhaustion written all over them.

The second pair came back about twenty minutes later. Simon and Cole.

“Anything?” Tamsin asked.

Cole let out a short, humorless laugh. “We found a candy wrapper,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, but it was faded as hell,” Simon added, dropping his backpack onto the floor with a dull thud. “Probably been there for years. Some hiker’s trash. That’s it.”

No one had anything to say to that.

The third and fourth pairs trickled in not long after, each report more or less identical. Long distances covered. Different directions. Nothing to show for it except a few faded pieces of trash.

By the time the doors opened again, the room had gone quieter. Rhys stepped inside first, with Zach and Jensen close behind him.

They looked even more worn out than the others. Dirt streaked up the legs of their pants, shirts damp with sweat, and a faint edge of fatigue in the way they carried themselves.

“Well?” Sutton asked.

Rhys exhaled, dragging a hand over the back of his neck. “Nothing,” he said. “We went out northeast. Checked all the caves. After that, we went down and covered as much of the river valley as we could.”

“We even searched right along the edge of the riverbanks,” Jensen added. “Figured if someone was camping out here, theymight want to stay close to a water source. But yeah… it’s like Rhys said. No fire pits, no gear. No sign that anyone’s been staying out there recently.”

A quiet, heavy silence settled over the room as that sank in. Because if no one was out there, then that meant the killer was either very well hidden, which spoke to their exceptionally high levels of resourcefulness and cunning… or they weren’t in the woods at all.

They were right here.

12

“This is fucked.”Knox scraped a hand through his hair. “Seriouslyfucked.None of this makes any sense.”

Sutton shot me a sideways look. “Maybe Alissa was right after all,” she muttered. “It’s one of us.”