Page 69 of Hide And Seek

Zach froze. “Uhh…”

“Maybe I got it wrong,” Knox said hurriedly, dropping back down again. “Maybe when I checked… maybe I was wrong. He could just be unconscious. He could wake up.” His voice was climbing, frantic now. “I need to check again.”

As he rambled, he pressed two fingers against Rhys’s neck. “Wake up, man,” he muttered. “Gotta get up now.”

“Oh my god.” Jasmine turned her head, whispering so that only the people closest to her could hear. “I never thought I’d feel sorry for Knox, but this is just too tragic to watch.”

Caitlin moved forward and gently took one corner of the sheet from Zach. “Knox,” she said, her voice steady and kind. “I’m so sorry, but we really need to cover him now.”

“But he might not be dead,” Knox insisted, his eyes wild. “If we just wait—”

“Hey.” Jesse crouched down in front of him, steady and calm. “Look at me.”

Knox’s gaze flicked to him.

“I know this is tough,” Jesse said quietly. “But we need you to take a breath and step back so we can take care of this, okay?”

For a second, it looked like Knox might fight it. Then something in him gave way, and he nodded once, barely.

Jesse helped him to his feet and guided him away while Zach and Caitlin stepped forward and carefully draped the sheet over Rhys’s body.

Sutton turned to look at the rest of the group. Her face was still pale, but her jaw was set with grim determination. “While Jesse gets Knox cleaned up, I need everyone else to come with me to the assembly hall,” she said. “We need to talk about what’s happening here. Properly.”

No one argued.

We moved as a group, slow and quiet, like something had been drained out of us, leaving only a hollow, unsteady kind of momentum behind.

When we reached the main hall, Sutton peeled away from the group without a word, heading straight for the wall where stacks of plastic chairs had been pushed aside. She grabbed one, then another, dragging them across the floor and into the center of the room. The harsh scrape of plastic against wood sliced through the silence.

“A little help?” she said snidely, not looking at anyone in particular.

That was enough to snap the rest of us into motion. People moved without speaking, pulling chairs from along the walls and setting them down one by one until a loose circle began to take shape in the middle of the hall.

I lowered myself into one of the chairs, my hands clasped too tightly in my lap, my pulse still uneven. All I could see in mymind’s eye was Rhys. Not the way he’d looked in the shed, but the way he’d looked three hours ago. Alive. Warm. Solid.

My throat tightened, and I forced my gaze downward.

Sutton stepped into the center of the circle and clapped her hands, sharp enough to make a few people flinch. When everyone’s attention shifted to her, she drew in a breath and straightened slightly.

“Over the last few days, we haven’t really talked about this properly,” she said. “We’ve thrown around a few half-baked ideas, sure. But that’s it. So I think it’s time we actually addressed what’s going on.”

She paused, scanning the group as a few murmurs of agreement rippled through. Then her eyes landed on me.

“A couple of days ago, Alissa and Jasmine floated the idea that the killer might be one of us,” she continued. “At the time, it sounded too horrible to even consider. But I think it’s time we took that possibility seriously. And I think it’s also time we addressed the elephant in the room.”

Tamsin frowned. “What elephant?”

Sutton’s gaze moved slowly around the circle, lingering just long enough on each face to make it uncomfortable.

“Most of us have worked here every summer for the past four years,” she said. “And in all that time, we’ve never had anything bad happen.”

“If you say so,” Jasmine muttered under her breath.

Sutton’s eyes flicked to her, but she didn’t rise to it. Instead, she looked back at me. “This year, three new counselors showed up,” she went on, her voice tightening, “and suddenly people started dropping like flies.”

The shift in the room was immediate.

“Hold on,” I said, sitting up straighter. “Are you actually accusingme? Or Simon and Grayson?”