Page 104 of Hide And Seek

“Right.” Rhys looked back at me, frowning slightly. “I thought you said there was no plan for the day.”

Shit.

“I, uhh… I completely forgot about the raft thing until now,” I said, rubbing the side of my head. “I guess all this stress is affecting my brain. Or maybe it’s the exhaustion.”

“Yeah, must be that,” he said, though I could’ve sworn there was still a flicker of suspicion in his eyes.

“Anyway,” Jasmine cut in. “I have no idea how long the building process will take, because obviously none of us are professionals, and we have to try and find all the materials first. So… we could be here with lunch for you anywhere between twelve and three. Maybe even a little earlier or later. It’s all kind of up in the air right now. But we’ll bring you a lot of extra stuff in case we can’t sneak out again for dinner.”

“No problem.” Rhys tipped his head slightly. “I’ll be right here.”

Jasmine nodded. “We’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah,” I added, forcing a small smile. “Take care.”

His gaze lingered on me for a beat longer than necessary. “You too.”

Once Jasmine and I were halfway down the path and well out of earshot, she shot me a sharp side-eye. “If we survive this, the first thing I’m doing is signing you up for an acting class.”

“Why?”

“You really need to learn to act cool, for your own benefit,” she said. “You were visibly freaking out back there. So jittery and stuttering constantly. You might as well have worn a neon sign that said, ‘Hey, Rhys, we totally suspect you!’.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I was a bit thrown by the raft thing.”

“Why?”

“I figured it would be better if we didn’t tell him about it, just in case. So I outright told him we had no plans for today, and then he totally caught me in the lie.”

“Oh, right.” Jasmine winced slightly. “Sorry. I just needed an excuse to make it clear that we could come back to the cabin whenever. So if he was planning to sneak off and mess with us today, that just made it a hell of a lot harder. Because he has absolutely no idea when we’ll show up.”

“That makes sense.” I hesitated, brows furrowing. “I’m guessing you took a look around the bathroom while you were in there?”

“Yup. But there was nothing suspicious. No bloodstained clothes or bloody smears in the sink.”

“Damn.” I exhaled. “What did you think overall?”

She shrugged, gaze drifting ahead as we walked. “It’s hard to say. He seemed surprised by everything we said, but at the same time, it was almost too good. Like he’d rehearsed it all.” She paused, then tilted her head slightly. “Then again, maybe we’re just looking for something that isn’t there because we already have it in our heads that it could be him.”

I chewed on that, my stomach twisting. Then I sighed. “So basically, we still have nothing on him.”

“Pretty much.” She gave me a small, humorless smile. “Love that for us.”

The rest of the morning blurred into restless, messy activity as the group split off into smaller teams, combing through the storage sheds and maintenance areas for anything remotelyusable. Planks of wood, broken oars, lengths of rope, old tarps, even a couple of dented barrels that someone insisted might help with buoyancy. Everything got dragged down to the main clearing in uneven armfuls and dumped into a growing pile.

Logan took the lead once it was all there, talking people through the building process with a kind of forced confidence that didn’t quite hide the strain in his voice. People argued over what should go where, whether something would hold, and whether the whole thing was even worth attempting. Hands got scraped, tempers flared, and more than once someone snapped at someone else for doing something ‘wrong’ like any of us really had any idea what the hell we were doing.

Still, piece by piece, it eventually started to resemble a real raft.

Just after three, we finally decided to take a break, and people peeled away in small groups, heading for the kitchen and dining hall. Jasmine and I didn’t linger. We packed up what we could carry and slipped back outside before anyone thought to question it.

By the time we reached the groundskeeper’s cabin again, my nerves were already starting to creep back in. Jasmine knocked, and Rhys opened the door a few seconds later, gaze flicking between us before settling on me. “Hey,” he said. “How’s the raft going?”

“It’s okay,” Jasmine replied, stepping inside without waiting. “But we’re not quite there yet.”

I followed her inside, doing my utmost to maintain a neutral expression as I handed the food to Rhys. He accepted it with a small, grateful smile, thumb briefly rubbing the side of my hand.

Jasmine turned to look at him. “Can I use your bathroom again?”