Page 97 of Hide And Seek
Chris swallowed again, hard enough that it looked painful. “His throat was…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “It was cut.”
“No,” Maren muttered. “No way.”
“I tried to… ” Chris dragged a hand down his face. “Fuck, I don’t even know what I was trying to do. I just… I froze. Couldn’t move for ages.”
No one challenged him. No one here would’ve done any better.
“And then I suddenly realized…” He sucked in another deep breath. “I didn’t know where the hell I was anymore. I’d been running around looking for Knox for hours. Calling his name, doubling back. I got completely turned around. And it was starting to get dark.”
“Jesus,” Simon muttered, rubbing his forehead.
“So I just started walking,” Chris went on. “Didn’t even care which direction at that point. I just needed to get out of there.”He paused, jaw tightening again. “Then I got lucky and hit the camp road. I figured I could follow it back up to the gate. But…”
“But what?” Caitlin asked, eyes wide.
Chris’s hands shook slightly at his sides. “That’s when I saw them.”
“Who?” Garrett asked, brows furrowing.
Chris looked at him, then at the rest of us. “Brad and Olivia.”
The room went dead quiet.
“They were on the side of the road,” he said. “They didn’t even make it half a mile out.”
Jasmine’s fingers tightened around the back of the chair beside her. “How?” she asked, voice low.
“Arrows,” he said. “Through the chest. One each.”
No one moved or spoke for a moment. Then Grayson stood, throwing his hands up. “How the fuck is this happening?” he said. “How is this guy sneaking around and doing this shit? It’s like… it’s all happening right in front of us, but we just aren’t seeing it!”
“I have no idea,” Wren murmured, head shaking wearily. “The only thing that would really make sense is if it’s one of us, hiding in plain sight. But we already know it can’t be one of us.”
Sutton cleared her throat. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” she said in a commanding voice. “We’re all staying in the assembly hall tonight. We’ll sleep on the floor. Together. No one goes in or out for any reason until daylight, when we know it’s at leastsomewhatsafe to walk around. There’s that staff toilet in the back we can all use.”
Grace lifted a shaky hand. “But Chris needs to shower so he—”
“I don’t give a fuck! He can wait until morning!” Sutton cut in, practically spitting out the words. Then she whirled on Jasmine, eyes flashing. “Andyou.Nice job at trash-talking ourfriends who turned out to be dead all along. Really fucking helpful.”
Jasmine glared back at her. “I wasn’t trash-talking them. And it wasn’t even my theory. It—” Her words instantly dried up as she realized her mistake. “It wasn’tatheory, I mean. It was just… an idea.”
“Same thing, dumbass.” Sutton shook a finger at her. “Next time, you better be damn fucking sure before you throw out an accusation like that. Or else.”
Jasmine folded her arms. “Or else what?”
“We’ll make you sleep outside,” Sutton said. She lifted her chin and looked around. “That goes for everyone here. If any of you decide to act like an asshole and piss off the rest of us… you’re on your own. Got it?”
No one argued with Sutton, even though it was clear that none of us agreed with her nasty threat. Because beneath her ugly words was something else; something we all felt to our cores. Fear, raw and suffocating.
If the killer could do that to Knox, snatching him right out from under Chris’s nose without a sound, and if Brad and Olivia hadn’t even made it half a mile down the road…
Then nowhere was safe anymore.
Not even our cabins.
Not even here in the hall, really. But if we all stuck together in a big group, like Sutton said, then we could at least feel the vaguest sense of safety in numbers.
Chairs scraped back slowly as people started moving. Plates and cups were cleared in near silence, the earlier attempt at normalcy completely gone now.
