Page 128 of Hide And Seek

“Wait. Back up a sec. Did you just say Logan gotblown up?”

“Oh. Right.” Jasmine sniffed hard. “You wouldn’t know about that.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“There was some kind of net stretched across the river downstream. It was rigged to a bomb. So when the raft got caught in it, Logan reached down to try and free it and…” Her voice wavered. “It exploded.”

“That’s what that booming sound was yesterday? Around seven?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.” Rhys exhaled. “I thought I was just losing my mind out here. Cabin fever or something.”

“No.” Jasmine’s voice cracked again. “Logan’s dead.”

The sofa creaked softly.

“We were all messed up afterwards,” she continued. “Everyone kept arguing, and then Grace just… snapped. She started screaming that we were all going to die, and then she ran outside. In the dark.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. You didn’t hear anything?”

There was a slight pause.

“I went scouting after it started getting dark,” Rhys said. “At one point I thought I heard a scream way off in the distance, but it stopped almost immediately. I figured it was probably an animal.”

“You must’ve been too far away.” Jasmine took another shaky breath. “Alissa… she wanted us to go after Grace. She thought we could get her back inside before anything happened. But it was so dark, and no one else wanted to go, and I—”

Her voice collapsed completely, and a sob tore out of her.

“Hey.” Rhys’s tone softened again. “Take your time.”

“I said no,” Jasmine choked out. “I thought if I refused, she’d stay inside too. I thought she’d realize how dangerous it was, but instead she just…” Another shaky exhale. “She ran out there alone.”

“Alissa went outalone?”

“Yes.” Jasmine sounded like she could barely breathe now. “I should’ve gone with her. But I was just so fucking scared.”

None of this is your fault, I wanted to scream. But the gag stayed lodged between my teeth, and all I could do was listen.

“And then… Sutton went after them,” Jasmine continued weakly.

“Seriously?Sutton?”

“Yeah.” A bitter little laugh slipped out between the sniffles. “Guess she turned out to be a better person than me.”

“That’s not true.”

Jasmine sighed heavily. “A few minutes later, Jensen and Chris went looking too,” she said. “And then…”

She trailed off again.

Rhys let the silence sit for a second. “What happened?” he finally asked.

“We don’t know for sure.” Jasmine’s voice dropped. “Nobody saw anything. But none of them came back.”

She broke apart again after that, crying openly now.