Page 114 of Hide And Seek

Grace was nowhere to be seen. I still couldn’t hear her, either. Just the wind shifting through the trees. The faint creak of branches. The occasional call of a nightbird.

But I knew she had to be here somewhere. She couldn’t have gonethatfar just yet.

I rounded another row, then another, my pulse climbing higher with every empty space, every corner that revealed nothing.

Then… a voice. Faint, but close. For a second, I just listened, my breath held tightly.

“There you are,” a female voice was saying. “Everyone’s going crazy over you.”

I stepped carefully toward the voice, then slowed as I reached the corner of the next cabin. My shoulder brushed the wood as I leaned in just enough to see.

Grace was standing a few feet away, shoulders hunched, chest heaving. Sutton was right in front of her.

“You know, you’re really lucky that dumb bitch Alissa guilted me into coming out here,” Sutton was saying now, her voice sharp. “Now get your shit together and come back inside before we both die.”

“I can’t.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid.” Sutton stepped closer, jabbing her friend in the shoulder. “Get. Inside.Now.”

Grace let out a shaky breath, still half-laughing, half-sobbing. “You don’t get it. There’s no point hiding from this anymore,” she said. “He isn’t going to let us go. He isn’t going to stop until he’s made us all pay.”

A cold, creeping feeling slid down my spine.

“Pay for what?” Sutton asked, folding her arms.

“Oh, fuck off, Sutton! Stop pretending like nothing happened!” Grace snapped. “You know why he’s coming after us!”

“Actually, I don’t,” Sutton said. “It’s not like he’s released some sort of manifesto outlining his reasons.”

“Don’t play dumb.” Grace’s voice dipped lower. “You know exactly why he’s doing it. Weallknow why.”

Sutton sighed, dragging a hand through her hair. “Okay, fine. Maybe it’s because of Carly. But we have no way of knowing that for sure, do we?”

“Yes, we do! What the fuck else would it be?” Grace’s voice pitched higher. “We killed her, Sutton! Wekilledher and someone saw! And now they’re not going to stop until they’ve punished us all!”

We killed her.

My pulse stuttered as my mind tried to rearrange those words into something safer.

A figure of speech. Guilt talking.

It had to be.

Grace just meant their negligence had killed her. They’d all gotten wasted that night and forgotten to do cabin checks, so they didn’t notice that Carly was no longer in her bed. Didn’t go looking for her. Didn’t find her floundering in the lake until it was already too late.

“No one saw what we did, Grace,” Sutton said in a low voice. “And even if they did, why wouldn’t they just go to the police and get us charged with murder? Why do allthis?”

My stomach dropped so fast it made me feel dizzy.

Oh my god.I was wrong.

The Legacies hadn’t inadvertently killed Carly through drunken negligence.

They’d killed her on purpose.

The ax suddenly felt too heavy in my hand, my fingers damp against the handle. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to move; to put distance between myself and this conversation before the other two girls realized I was here.

I eased one foot back, trying to retrace my steps without making a sound. If I could just get back to the hall, where there was safety in numbers, I could—