Chapter 11
Nobody slept much.
I could see it in the faces around the dining hall the next morning.
Hollowed eyes. Slower movements. Conversations that started and then fizzled out before they went anywhere.
The hall felt cavernous without the kids in it, every small sound carrying farther than it should.
At one point, someone accidentally set a mug down too hard, and several people flinched.
No one had said Delia’s name yet, but that didn’t surprise me. There was a kind of unspoken rule in situations like this, where something was too fresh and awful to look at directly, so everyone just… didn’t.
Brad and Olivia were already geared up by the time the rest of us finished eating and drifted outside. Both had hiking packs strapped on, stuffed with water, food, and sleeping bags. Brad also had a compact two-person tent clipped to the side of his pack.
He glanced around at us before speaking. “If we get signal a few miles out, or if someone picks us up, we could be back here with the police in a few hours,” he said. “If not, we’ll camp overnight and finish the rest of the walk tomorrow morning.”
“Either way, worst case, we're hitting Millhaven around midday tomorrow,” Olivia added.
I turned that over quietly in my mind and tried not to think about what else could happen in a day and a half.
Around me, people were nodding. Caitlin stepped forward and pressed an extra bottle of water into Olivia's hand, which she accepted with a grateful nod.
“Take care of yourselves,” Tamsin said.
“We will,” Brad said, and then they turned and headed for the gate.
We stood in a loose cluster, watching them go. Through the open gate, the road stretched out ahead of them, pale gravel cutting through dense pine before curving out of sight. They didn’t hesitate or turn back to look at us. They just kept walking.
“What now?” Wren asked.
The question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but most heads turned toward Rhys. He had his arms crossed, eyes still on the road, jaw set. After a moment, he dragged his gaze back to the group.
“I think we should search the camp,” he said.
“Every building. Top to bottom, every room, every cupboard, every storage space we can get into.” He paused.
“The walkie-talkies were all destroyed, but that doesn't mean there isn't something else here we don't know about. Maintenance staff sometimes keep old equipment around. So there might be an old radio somewhere. Or a satellite phone.” He shook his head slightly.
“We don't know for sure until we actually look.”
It was a good plan. Practical and straightforward. Not only that, it gave us all something to do, which felt a hell of a lot better than standing around letting our minds run wild.
“Okay,” Jesse said, nodding. “That makes sense.”
“Before we do that, though,” Rhys went on, “I think everyone should go and grab something to defend themselves.”
A ripple moved through the group.
“Like what?” Stevie asked.
“Kitchen has knives. Ax throwing shed has a full rack. Groundskeeper's shed probably has a few tools that could do some damage if it came to it.” He looked around the group. “Pick something you're comfortable with and keep it on you at all times. Just in case.”
Twelve hours ago, advice like that might've sounded excessive. Now it just sounded like common sense. Still, I could see a potential problem with it, and judging by the looks flickering across a few faces, I wasn’t the only one thinking it.
I lifted a hand, and Rhys dipped his chin in my direction. “Alissa?”
“I’m not trying to stir up drama or freak everyone out even more,” I said, my voice coming out a little tighter than I wanted.
“But we all kind of assumed last night that whoever did this isn’t one of us.
And I really hope that’s true. But… what if it is one of us?
Then we’re just letting them roam around right under our noses with an ax. ”
A small, uneasy shift moved through the group.
“It’s not one of us,” Rhys said, shaking his head. “Why would it be?”
“Who knows? But she’s got a good point,” Jasmine said. “We don’t know for sure that it’s not one of us behind all this shit. So I’m not saying we should start pointing fingers or anything, but we’ve got to consider the implications of it, at least.”
There were several mutters of agreement, and I saw at least ten heads nodding around me.
“So what’s your suggestion, then?” Sutton asked in a snide tone. “Should we all just agree not to take anything to defend ourselves with, on the off chance that one of us is secretly a psychotic killer? Just wander around totally defenseless? Maybe even go naked?”
“Okay, okay, point taken,” Jasmine muttered, shoulders dropping. “I guess we should all grab a weapon.”
“Actually...” Rhys was still looking at me, expression thoughtful. “That raises something else.”
The group quieted again, and he dragged his gaze away from me, scanning everyone else’s faces.
“If it’s not one of us,” he said, “then whoever did this has to be close. Really close.”
A few people nodded, following his line of thinking.
“Which means they’re probably out there,” he went on, gesturing toward the woods. “Somewhere just beyond the camp. So while some of you search inside like I suggested, I want to check the surrounding woods. Look for signs of a campsite, anything that tells us someone’s been staying nearby.”
Jesse nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
Rhys scanned the group. “Anyone else want to scout the woods? The more ground we cover, the better,” he said. “We can split directions and get it done faster. But stay in pairs, for obvious reasons.”
Levi was the first to step forward. “Yeah, I’m in.”
“Same,” Jesse said, moving up beside him.
Grayson and Simon exchanged a quick look before nodding almost in unison, and Garrett followed a second later, shrugging like it wasn’t even a question. Cole drifted in after them, hands shoved in his pockets.
From the other side of the group, Zach stepped forward. Chris and Logan went with him, and Jensen rounded out the group, falling into place beside Rhys.
I counted quickly. Eleven.
Rhys did the same. His gaze flicked over the group, a small crease forming between his brows. “We’ll need one more,” he said. “Like I said, it’s safer to move in pairs.”
For a second, no one spoke.
Then Knox shook his head, glancing at the other three guys who hadn’t stepped forward. “I think a few of us guys should stay here,” he said. “Just in case.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing,” one of the others added. “If whoever’s out there comes back to the camp, we probably don’t want every man out in the woods.”
A couple of the girls shifted at that, the implication hanging there without being said outright.
Rhys considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. That’s fair.”
He glanced back at the group in front of him. “We’ll work with what we’ve got. Split into pairs, and I’ll go with Zach and Jensen to take one direction as a trio. That way no one’s going alone.”
No one questioned it. The remaining scout volunteers started pairing off almost immediately, falling into twos with the kind of quiet efficiency that came from wanting to get moving more than anything else.
They headed off to the campground kitchen to grab food and water for their scouting trip. Meanwhile, the rest of us lingered for a moment on the lawn, exchanging brief, uncertain glances before breaking off into smaller groups.
“Guess we should get started,” Jasmine muttered beside me.
The groups fanned out across the camp in loose clusters of two and three.
We checked everything in sight. Cabins, activity sheds, storage rooms, offices, anywhere with a door or a lock or even just a shadowed corner that hadn’t been properly looked at.
Then we checked it all again, slower this time, opening drawers we’d skimmed past earlier, pulling things off shelves, crouching to look under beds and behind stacked equipment.
At first, there was a sense of purpose to it. People called out to each other when they finished a room, and groups compared notes in passing, asking if anyone had found anything even remotely useful.
No one had.
By late morning, the energy had started to dip. Conversations thinned out. Doors opened and closed with less urgency, and the whole thing began to feel like we were moving through the same motions without expecting a different result.
We broke for lunch just after twelve, regrouping near the main hall with nothing to show for the last few hours but dust on our hands and a growing, gnawing frustration.
“So that was a total waste of time,” Wren said, dropping down onto the steps with a bottle of water.
“Not necessarily,” Caitlin replied, though she didn’t sound convinced. “At least we know there’s nothing obvious.”
“Yeah, well, ‘nothing obvious’ isn’t exactly helpful,” Jasmine muttered. “I mean, an obvious radio would’ve been nice.”
Caitlin sighed. “You know what I mean.”
I sat down beside her, my gaze drifting across the camp. It all looked the same as it had yesterday. Peaceful. Ordinary. Like it wasn’t hiding anything at all.
Somehow that made it worse.
“We should look again after we’ve eaten,” Tamsin said after a moment, quieter than the others but firm. “There’s a lot of buildings here. It’s easy to miss something the first time around. Maybe even the second.”
“She’s right,” I said. “And we don’t have anything better to do, do we?”
By the time the light started to soften toward late afternoon, it was clear we weren’t going to find anything.
Every building had been checked twice. Some of them three times. Drawers emptied, shelves cleared, storage boxes opened and re-opened as if something might magically appear the second or third time around.
Nothing did.
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, they might 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.