Chapter 12
XAVIER
Ascream echoed through the camp right as I was getting out of the shower, and I struggled to tug clothes onto my wet limbs before racing outside to investigate.
It was still early, so I found lots of people stumbling out of the bunk cabins looking half--asleep and confused.
A second scream echoed from farther away.
“What the hell is going on?” Torin asked, jogging over to me with unlaced shoes and his sweatshirt hanging around his neck. “Who is screaming?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, shaking my head. Glancing past him, I made a mental note of our team. Ace, Z, Augie, Minho… “Where are the little dudes? Skye and Noah?”
Torin shook his head. “No clue. Noah was gone when I woke up, and Skye left like ten minutes or so ago.”
Panic swept through me as my gaze scanned the increasing crowd of people flowing out of the bunk cabins but neither of the small, blond dudes were anywhere to be seen. If something had happened to them…
“Shit, come on,” I hissed at Torin, taking off at a jog in the direction I thought the screams had come from. Several other campers had the same idea, and we arrived at the crime scene at the same time as a half dozen others.
“Holy fuck!” Torin exclaimed, his jaw dropping as he stared. “Is that—-?”
He cut himself off as the girl kneeling on the ground gave a loud wail, clutching her dead friend to her chest. Someone else doubled over to vomit.
“Someone get the producers here and call an ambulance!” I barked, giving one of the guys who’d arrived with us a shove. “Go, now!”
“I don’t know that an ambulance will do much, Xavi,” Torin muttered with a grimace.
I puffed a sigh because I agreed. At the same time, though, what the fuck else were we meant to do? Also, how in the hell had this even happened?
“Hey, Nikita, right?” I said as gently as I could manage, crouching down to speak with the sobbing girl.
I did my best to avert my gaze from the dead girl in her arms, but it was hard to ignore the brightly fletched arrow sticking out of her eye socket or the huge puddle of blood surrounding the two of them. “Nikita, I’m Xavier.”
The live one sniffled with an edge of hysteria, her watery eyes focusing on me with confusion. “I know who you are,” she hiccupped. “I need… Can you get help? My friend…”
I nodded quickly, trying to remain calm.
“I know. Someone is calling for an ambulance, okay? We’ll get some help here really soon.
” But even I didn’t believe that. For one thing, the nearest hospital was over two hours away, and for another…
her friend was already dead. Judging by how much of the arrow was sticking out, there had to be a good four inches inside her skull and through her brain.
“Nikita, what happened?” I asked carefully, desperate to know if this was just a tragic accident or something more sinister. “Did you see what happened?”
The girl shook her head, sobbing again. “No, I didn’t see…
I just found her like this.” She broke down into a whining cry again, and I swallowed hard.
There was no way the girl could have shot herself in the eye with an arrow, so someone else had to be involved.
But if it was an accident, where the fuck were they now?
“Tor?” I turned my head to look for my friend. “Find the little dudes.”
He jerked a quick nod, not needing me to explain that request as he hurried away from the crime scene. He’d been just as obsessed with Noah as Minho had been lately, so no doubt he was already panicking about where he was at.
As much as Noah frustrated the hell out of me, I didn’t want him hurt.
I wanted to know what secrets he was hiding from the team—-secrets that I had a feeling could jeopardize our platform.
But that incident with the crazed fan had been a whole step too far in putting both Noah and Ace in danger.
Then again, he’d bounced back pretty well, judging by the sharpness of his tongue last night and this morning.
Maybe I needed to try a different tack with him. They do say you catch more flies with honey…
“Whoa, what the shit?” Ace exclaimed, skidding to a halt beside me and staring down at the dead girl with shocked eyes. “Xavi, what happened?”
I shrugged, shaking my head. “No idea. Nikita doesn’t know anything, either. She just found her friend like this.”
Ace blinked a couple of times, taking in what little information we had. “I see.”
A strangled sort of laugh escaped me before I could catch it. “Bad pun, bro,” I muttered under my breath, and Ace whacked me in the shoulder. “I sent someone to call an ambulance and find some staff, but it might be a while.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Nikita, sweetheart, can I take your friend?
I’ll carry her to the infirmary, okay?” Ace knelt beside me, seemingly oblivious to the blood as he reached out to take the corpse from the sobbing girl.
“We’ll get her taken care of, all right?
But we can’t stay out here in the cold.”
I thought for sure Nikita would refuse, but when Ace started to lift the dead girl, Nikita actually released her and let him stand with her friend in his arms.
“Xavi, can you get Nikita cleaned up and find her a warm drink?” Ace asked in a calm, commanding voice.
I nodded, pushing to my feet as well. “Yeah, for sure. I asked Tor to find the little dudes, too. Have you seen either of them this morning?”
Ace’s expression hardened, and his jaw clenched hard. “Earlier, yes.”
There was something off about his reaction. “So we aren’t concerned that they’re in trouble?”
Ace gave a vexed sound, rearranging the dead girl in his arms. “No. Maybe. Yes. I’m sure they’re fine, but someone should check on them. Noah especially. We had words earlier…”
Well, that was interesting. “You? Perfectly diplomatic leader Ace had words with the little menace?”
He rolled his eyes. “Now’s not the time. Sort out Nikita, then check on our team, please. All of them.”
He strode off with the dead girl in his arms, and I filed away that information for later.
He was absolutely right that now wasn’t the time, but I also wouldn’t be letting that intrigue slip away without comment.
Ace had always been an unwavering supporter of Noah’s place on our team, but things had shifted significantly between them since the attack.
Did he blame Noah for his near--death experience?
For some reason, the bruises on Noah’s neck flashed into my head, but I shook that thought away as fast as it’d arrived. Ace would never.
As gently as I could, I draped my hoodie over Nikita and coaxed her to walk with me back toward the cabins and bathroom blocks.
She was covered in her friend’s blood and needed to get cleaned up, but I definitely wasn’t going to be the one to help with that.
Not with the cameras still running, anyway.
As soon as we came into view of the cabins, I made eye contact with Sakura and gestured her over.
“Can you take Nikita to shower?” I asked her, indicating the mess visible on Nikita’s bare legs.
Sakura’s eyes widened, but she quickly ushered Nikita into the girls shower block with her, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Sakura was a huge pain in the ass, opportunistic as fuck, and responsible for a really dark time in Torin’s past, but she was also smart as hell and typically unflappable.
She could handle cleaning up blood without freaking out.
Admittedly, we had probably done everything wrong in fucking up a crime scene, but there was no way we could just leave a dead body lying out in the archery field for God knows how long until authorities arrived.
The nearest town was two hours away, and they probably only had one police officer on duty.
“Xavi, what happened?” Augie called out as he approached, breathless and frazzled. “Was that Niki from Team Tiger covered in blood?”
I grimaced and jerked a nod. “Yeah, she found her friend dead with an arrow through her eye out on the archery field. Ace’s taken the body to the camp infirmary just now.”
Augie looked alarmed. “Was that a good idea? A crime scene—-”
“Yeah, I know,” I snapped, cutting him off. “It’s done now. Hopefully there’s enough footage that they don’t need all the crime scene evidence or whatever the fuck it is they do. With all the cameras around this camp, surely they’ll have a clear recording of what happened.”
He nodded. “Good point. Fucking hell, what a horrible thing.”
“Have you seen Skye or Noah?” I asked, still worried about where the hell they both were. If this wasn’t an accident—-if this was a targeted attack—-then could there be more than one victim? Had other campers also been killed? Was Noah one of them?
Shit. Why did that idea upset me when he was such a pain in my ass?
“Yeah, they’re in the cabin,” Augie replied with a gesture toward our assigned lodging. “They came running after the screams, but Skye wasn’t watching where he was going and ran straight into a low--hanging branch. Pretty sure his nose is broken.”
“Oh my God,” I groaned as I started toward the bunk room. “How? Is it bleeding?”
Augie shook his head. “Nah, just looking super bruised and swollen, but if it’s a clean break it doesn’t always bleed. He’s for sure concussed, though. Already vomited once.”
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, jogging up the steps to our cabin and shoving the door open.
Inside, I quickly found the missing blond boys in a fit of giggles while Skye held an ice pack to his face.
The relief that shot through me, seeing them both alive and relatively unhurt, was enough to make my skin tingle, but I shook it off quickly. “What the hell happened to you idiots?”
“Oh good, Godzilla’s here to breathe his radiation breath all over us,” Noah said with a groan, rolling his eyes like the petulant little shit he was. He was just begging to be put firmly in his place one of these days.
“Atomic breath,” Z corrected with a lazy smile. “What was the screaming about, Xavi? Someone slept with someone’s boyfriend?”
I frowned and shook my head. “No. Someone’s dead, and right now it’s unclear if it was an accident or deliberate.”
The silence that filled the room was thick enough to suffocate. But facts were facts, and I’d rather the whole team were taking their own safety seriously right now instead of joking around. We’d already nearly lost Ace and Noah once; I doubted Team Olympus would survive another scare like that.