Chapter 20 #2
“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 least somewhat safe 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. “And you. Nice job at trash-talking our friends 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’t a theory, 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.
By the time we were done with the dishes, a few people had already started dragging things into the center of the assembly hall. Blankets from cupboards that were usually used on movie nights. Seat cushions. Jackets. Anything that could even vaguely pass as bedding.
The lights stayed on. No one even suggested turning them off.
I grabbed a spare blanket from one of the piles and spread it out beside Jasmine’s makeshift spot on the floor. She dropped down with a quiet sigh, rubbing at her face like she was trying to wipe the whole day off.
I lowered myself beside her, pulling the blanket over me. Around us, other people were shifting and settling, the low murmur of voices gradually fading as exhaustion started to win out over panic.
I turned toward Jasmine, lowering my voice so that no one else could hear. “I’m sorry Sutton went off at you like that,” I murmured. “And thanks for not throwing me under the bus and saying you heard the theory from me.”
Jasmine huffed softly, not opening her eyes. “It’s fine,” she muttered. “She’s a fucking bitch, but she’s just freaking out like the rest of us, so… I get it.” A beat passed. “Besides,” she added. “The theory didn’t really come from you. It came from Rhys.”
I swallowed. “Do you think he’s okay out there?”
“I’d say he’s probably more okay than the rest of us,” she whispered back. “The killer thinks he’s dead, remember? So it’s not like he’s keeping an eye out for him.”
I closed my eyes as she spoke, chest tightening slightly. I pictured the cabin. The unanswered knock. The food we’d left at the door.
My eyes suddenly flew open again. “Oh my god,” I whispered, pulse picking up. “I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“The killer moved the bodies. So he would’ve seen that Rhys was missing. And that means he probably knows he faked his death.”
“Or he just thinks the second killer moved him,” Jasmine said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t worry. I think Rhys is fine.”
“I hope so,” I said softly.
Around us, the room had gone quiet, because everyone was utterly drained, including me. But even as my body started to sink into the floor, exhaustion creeping in, my mind didn’t settle.
It kept circling back, over and over. To Rhys. To Knox. To Brad and Olivia. The road. The woods. The way Chris had said it all happened so fast. My thoughts just kept on picking at the same pieces, trying to force them into something that made sense.
A quiet voice from earlier eventually drifted back to me.
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.
Wren had said that.
A small, uneasy feeling stirred low in my stomach as I considered the notion again. Because it wasn’t entirely true anymore, was it?
We’d ruled people out based on where they were when certain things happened, and who could confirm it.
And Rhys…
He was the only one in the group who had no alibi for the time period in which Sloane and Reid were killed. But we’d all written him off as a suspect anyway, because by that stage, he’d technically had the strongest alibi of all.
He’d been dead.
My breath caught slightly as the thought landed properly for the first time.
That was Rhys’s only alibi; the fact that he’d been murdered by the killer. Except… that hadn’t actually happened. I knew that now.
I swallowed hard, my gaze still fixed on the ceiling as something cold started to spread through my chest.
No.
It didn’t mean anything. The guys had explained everything about the fake death plan, and it made total sense. And Jasmine had been so sure they were telling the truth…
My thoughts stuttered.
That was just Knox.
Jasmine told me he had an honesty tell, and that was how she knew he wasn’t lying when the guys filled us in on their plan. But all she’d said about Rhys was that she could never read him. Never tell what he was thinking.
So Knox could very well have told us the truth about the plan… but it could’ve just been a version of the truth that Rhys had given him.
A faint pulse started up in my throat as I considered it.
Rhys could’ve gotten Knox on board with the scheme for the exact same reasons Jasmine and I were later told: to confuse and disrupt the killer in the hopes of luring him out. But there could’ve been another reason behind the plan that Rhys kept to himself.
A reason that positioned him as the killer. Because if he was… then ‘dying’ could give him exactly what he needed. A way to disappear. To step completely off everyone’s radar.
No one would ever suspect him, because no one would ever question someone who was already dead. It was just like what he’d said to me about Brad and Olivia earlier.
My mind started moving faster now, picking up speed in a way I couldn’t seem to stop.
Most of the guys had gone out to search the woods not long after Brad and Olivia left for their walk to Millhaven, and Rhys had been with Jensen and Zach, scouting along the northwest side.
That part of the grounds was pretty close to the camp road.
So he could’ve split off from the other two guys, just for a few minutes.
Could’ve told them he was covering more ground that way.
My chest rose a little faster as I considered the possibility.
It wouldn’t have taken too long. Not if he’d planned it. Not if he’d hidden stuff out there beforehand.
A bow.
Arrows.
My fingers curled tighter into the blanket as something else occurred to me. Rhys’s family owned half the telecommunications infrastructure in the country, so if anyone could figure out how to cut us off out here…
No. Stop it.
Guilt was flooding in now; a sour, heavy knot settling in my stomach.
I’d already done this once. Already let my mind turn Rhys into something dangerous, something malicious, only for it to blow up in my face when he died.
Except he hadn’t really died, and now I was right back here again, accusing him. Even if it was only in my head.
After everything he’d said to me today. The way his voice had dropped when he told me my safety mattered more than anything else. The way he’d looked at me like he really meant it. He’d been nothing but good to me. Yet I was still lying here, picking him apart like he was the enemy.