How bad things can get a.., p.23
How Bad Things Can Get: A Novel, page 23
part #18 of Novels Series
“I like that. Any plans for what the new game will be?”
“No idea yet. It can be anything, even something silly, as long as the prize is big. Best sandcastle wins a million dollars. We’ll figure it out; right now, we just need to give them something to look forward to so they’re not upset about the grave. Unhappy guests make bad decisions.”
For that moment, they felt like a team again, no longer frustrating one another but working in tandem to resolve a crisis.
Petra just wished it hadn’t been tainted. Because she doubted Eton would have been so determined to help, so eagerly proactive, if he wasn’t trying to win back her favor.
They entered the village. The staff center was on its other side, just a few minutes away. They could raise the alert about the body from the communications hub and begin to fix things before they spiraled any further.
“Pet?”
Eton touched her arm, and Petra had to repress a shiver at the contact. He wasn’t watching her, though. He was staring across the clearing.
A crowd had gathered near one of the cabins.
This wasn’t the type of cluster that formed around a musician or a VIP guest who’d offered to put on a performance. This group’s energy was hushed and urgent. Unhappy.
Yellow shirts were visible at the edge. They were speaking to guests as they made pacifying hand motions.
The staff had instructions to notify Petra about any guest discontentment. They’d update her on whatever this situation was as soon as they had the chance.
Petra glanced at her digital pad. Her messages to the team were on her screen, but there were no responses. That was unusual. Even the low-priority tasks accumulated a string of received replies within seconds.
In fact, she’d had absolutely no incoming communication in nearly twenty minutes.
She looked back at the crowd. Several girls were huddled together, crying.
Something wasn’t right.
“Quick,” she said to Eton, striking across the clearing.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re here,” one of the staff said as she saw Petra. She looked exhausted; her hair was in a ponytail, but strands had come loose and frizzed around her face. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
Petra didn’t stop. There was a clear center to the scene: a nexus that held the guests transfixed.
A cabin, its door open.
“Is this part of a game?” a man asked. His voice wavered, somewhere between distress and outrage. “You could have given us a warning.”
Petra pushed past him and climbed onto the porch. The open door invited her in, the room beyond dim and cool. Something large was positioned in the room’s center.
The wood creaked as Eton climbed up behind her. Petra took another step forward. The cabin’s peaked roof blocked the dying light and made it possible to take in the shadowed scene.
An upright suitcase hung open.
And a body spilled halfway out of it.
Its bloodstained arm was extended, fingers trailing over the wood floor. A face loomed out of the gap in the seam. Lines of red crisscrossed the pale skin, like roads across a map, showing where her blood had flowed.
The eyes stared downward, the lips slightly parted, jaw loose.
Petra held a hand over her mouth.
“Oh,” Eton whispered, and he made a choking noise as he turned away. “What—what is—how—”
“I know her.” Petra forced the words out as every nerve in her body turned cold. “I know that girl. That’s Lisa.”
34
Ruth ran.
She didn’t follow a path. She didn’t have a goal.
She just needed to move.
Her mind kept churning up desperate options. We could beg Eton to make his team sign NDAs. We could break into the equipment rooms and destroy the footage. We could negotiate with Zach…
She recognized what was happening. She was in the bargaining stage of grief.
No amount of begging or coercion or bribery could keep this contained. There were too many parties involved. Too many disconnected people with differing motivations.
For all she knew, it might have already spread beyond Prosperity Island. She hadn’t been online to check.
With containment out of the question, her only option left was acceptance. And she wasn’t even close to ready for that.
So she ran.
He swore he would keep my secret.
And he’d sold her out. In exchange for four tickets to an island festival.
Did the promise mean anything to him? It must have. Surely, he’d meant it when he made it, or he would have told people sooner.
But…was she sure about that?
Zach was smart, thoughtful, strategic. He’d anticipated Eton’s games well ahead of time. His plan had gotten them fifth place in the hunt.
An impulsive person might have exposed Ruth on day one. Tabloids and newspapers would have paid him for his story. He might even have been able to get a book deal out of it.
But Zach had always played the long game, in every part of his life.
If what Carson said was true, Zach had spent months visiting Leslie to pry the truth out of her.
And then he’d spent further months dating Ruth, growing closer to her, moving in with her. He’d waited patiently for a letter that let him pretend he’d discovered her past by accident.
She pushed herself, lengthening her strides, even though the ground was leading upward.
If Zach was always playing the long game, then what was his goal? What had he been steering them toward?
It only took her a moment to find the answer.
He hadn’t sought Ruth out for fame. He didn’t care about the money he could get for interviews.
He wanted to know about Petition.
The truth. All of it.
A lot of details had been revealed to the public, but there were still large swaths, especially from the final day, that the courts had kept sealed.
She’d watched true crime enthusiasts squirm with curiosity over what had really happened. She’d heard the wild speculations, driven by the need to understand.
Ruth was the only survivor. The one witness.
The only person who could fully answer every question.
That was what Zach wanted from her. What he’d been trying to get.
And he’d been oh-so gentle about it.
Because he knew, Ruth was sure. He knew that if she’d sensed even a hint of morbid curiosity, she would have clammed up and never relaxed around him again.
So he’d stroked her hair after the nightmares, but never asked what was in them. He’d let her speak about Petition when she wanted to, but he kept the follow-up questions minimal.
He worked on building her trust. Making her feel secure, safe.
He wanted her to give her story voluntarily.
The ultimate gift.
But then…Eton’s festival had been announced.
And Zach, the man who always had a strategy, was tempted so deeply that he sacrificed all of his work to get a ticket.
No. That didn’t ring true.
That wasn’t Zach.
So why?
Because, Ruth realized, it had been a strategic play.
She’d given Zach almost nothing over the months they’d been together. And Eton’s festival had appeared as a rare opportunity to quicken the process.
So he’d given away her identity in the comments field of the submission form.
There was a chance that they weren’t even being read, and it would remain buried in the pile of unselected entries.
But if they won, then Zach could force Ruth’s secret out in a way that hid his involvement. It was the twenty-year anniversary of Petition. They were on an island surrounded by social media personalities, including several who focused on true crime.
If rumors began to spread about Ruth…
Ruth would believe she’d slipped up somewhere. Said the wrong thing to the wrong person while Petition was at the front of everyone’s minds.
And, as the truth rushed out, Zach would be there to support her, to shield her, to fight off anyone who invaded her space. He would be the one person she could trust.
Ruth would tell him everything then. It would be a relief to have someone she could be that close to, someone who could share the burden.
And that was exactly what would have happened.
Except Zach had made one very small mistake. He’d told his friends.
They’d been together for so long. They listened when he gave instructions. They didn’t argue or question him because, if Hayleigh’s frozen stare was anything to go by, they’d learned not to.
He hadn’t realized how close they were to snapping.
Ruth staggered to a halt, her lungs strained and her body shaking. She was somewhere near the peak’s eastern side. Its shadow covered her, but she wasn’t cold.
She didn’t think she would ever be cold again, not with the heat burning her up from the inside.
Her hands hit the soft dirt as she dropped to her knees.
She’d tried to escape Petition.
She’d guarded her secrets, hidden her scars, severed any ties to her past.
All that effort had only been enough to delay it.
Petition had come to claim her at last.
Ruth screamed.
Burning tears trailed down her face. Her fingers pressed into the dirt as she wailed and ached and shrieked. She poured her anger and her pain into the damp earth until she had nothing left. And then, shivering, her ears ringing, she slumped onto her side.
Ruth stared up at the canopy. Time flowed strangely, and she didn’t try to fight it. Small insects crept over her limbs. Leaves fell around her, one settling onto her shirt.
Dusk began to change the world from vivid green to gray. She didn’t want to ever move again.
The jungle sounds seemed magnified. Leaf against leaf, branch against branch. Insects chewed. Small birds called, delicate wings flittering.
And then a new noise joined the others.
Ruth felt its presence the moment it started. A slow, uneasy emotion passed through her. She couldn’t identify what caused the sound, or where it came from.
It was like…a heartbeat.
Rhythmic, steady.
But not comforting.
And it didn’t feel like it belonged on the island. Not like the birds, not like the insects. The new sound seemed wrong, somehow. Unkind.
Ruth, aching, sat up. Her eyes were blurred from how hard she’d cried. She turned, trying to pinpoint the noise, and it took her a moment to realize why that was so difficult.
There were two of them.
One coming from straight ahead. One to her right. They overlapped, blending together.
And they seemed to be growing closer.
Louder.
Building with each repetition.
Plants crowded around her in every direction. The low light made it hard to see.
No animal or bird could call like that. It wasn’t mechanical. The sounds felt jagged, unnatural.
A third repetition set up. This time from behind. And as Ruth turned toward it, she was finally able to identify it.
Chanting.
Her skin rose into gooseflesh. The voices barely sounded human. Single syllables snapped out from between teeth, sharp and hoarse and building.
It’s one of the games.
They would have announced it at dinner. Maybe it was a puzzle where guests were supposed to decipher scrambled words. Or maybe they were role-playing a Secret Door Movement ritual.
Whatever the theme, Ruth wanted nothing to do with it.
The voices were converging toward her, though. There were five of them now, and it was becoming hard to keep track as the chants overlapped.
She’d have to move before they saw her and tried to rope her in. Ruth got to her feet, every muscle aching. It felt deeply unfair that the game was set on the one small part of the island where she’d taken refuge.
An uneasy, crawling sensation prickled through her.
The earlier games had been centered on the beaches, where Eton and his staff could easily oversee the activities. This part of the jungle was too dense, too dark. Nowhere close to their accommodations. No clear, wide paths leading to it.
It was a strange place to have a game.
And where were the guests?
There were no other voices. No laughter or shouts.
The chanting continued to build. If they were speaking words, it was nothing Ruth could recognize. She could no longer tell how many of them there were.
A spit of rain broke through the canopy and hit her cheek.
She turned, slowly, the tip of her tongue between her teeth. She needed to get out of there, but she didn’t know which way to move.
The voices had formed a circle. With Ruth at the center.
Growing louder. Closer. Rising syllables and hard, snapping consonants.
Aggressive. Angry.
Breath caught in Ruth’s throat. Through the hazy dusk, through the blur of foliage, she saw skin.
Eyes caught the dull light, round and fixated on Ruth.
Unblinking.
Panic thumped with every pulse of her heart, but a part of her still wanted it to be a game, a joke, a prank.
A man was moving closer. Leaves dragged across bare skin as he pressed through them. She saw ribs and knees and hip bones and pubic hair.
Not a game. Not any kind of entertainment that had been promised at the festival.
His jaw moved, rigid, as he spat out the stream of jagged sounds. Unblinking, rounded eyes seemed to bore into her soul.
Ruth shifted back, her hands rising.
Movement to her left. A second figure, creeping out from between the trees.
Her hair hung shaggy around her face. Her breasts and stomach quivered with each frantic chant.
Ripples of light caught on metal as she twisted something in her hand.
A hook the size of Ruth’s head. The kind butchers used to hoist up slabs of meat for storage.
Voices came from every direction. So close and so loud that she could no longer hear her own thoughts.
Another spit of rain hit Ruth’s arm. The drop was heavy, hard. Promising not just a sprinkle, but a downpour.
Ruth dragged a shuddering breath into tight lungs.
And she found there was still something of the girl from Petition living in her.
The girl who did not want to die.
The girl who would crawl, the girl who would scramble, the girl who would do whatever it took to survive.
The stranger lifted the hook, and fading light snapped over the metal like a ghost.
Ruth bolted.
A bare arm reached out to snatch at her. She ducked it. Bodies moved in, their eyes staring, their hands reaching.
Ruth skidded, scrambling. Fingers grazed through her hair as she leaped through them.
Out through the net of strangers that had been tightening around her. Past them and into the jungle.
The chanting hit a crescendo, then cut into silence.
And in that silence, Ruth heard their bare feet pounding over the ground as they gave chase.
“Get the guests away from here,” Petra yelled, pointing at each of the four visible staff members to make sure she had their attention. “All of you, get them moved back to Sunset Beach and set a perimeter around this cabin. No one goes near it. No one goes into it. Understand?”
They stared at her for a second, their eyes large and frightened, and then her words seemed to register and they broke into action. It was fumbled and confused; they grabbed at guests and tried to physically turn them away from the cabin, stammering instructions. But at least it was something.
Petra stood on the edge of the cabin’s porch, her back to the scene.
Two bodies. Two deaths.
At least one of them violent.
Her mind shrank away from the word murder, and she hated herself for it. Petra was not an impractical person. She knew what she was looking at.
Behind her, Eton still stood in the doorway, facing into the cabin. He didn’t seem able to move. His breathing whistled, tinged with panic.
“Is anyone’s phone working?” a woman yelled.
Many of the crowd had their mobiles out. Some were texting, some were trying to make calls.
They wanted to contact the people they’d arrived with, or maybe call family at home.
Petra’s focus moved from figure to figure. Some guests held their phones straight up to the sky, straining to see the screens.
She looked at her own digital pad. Twenty-five minutes with no messages.
Petra swore.
“Eton, we need to find the team leaders.” She grabbed his arm, tugged him away from the corpse in the luggage. “This is urgent.”
Two bodies.
A spreadsheet that said everyone was accounted for.
Communications cutting out right when she most needed them.
She was not enough of a fool to believe those things were unrelated.
Which meant…
Her mind balked at the idea, but she forced herself to face it anyway, because it was her job to face the ugly stuff.
Someone on the island was dangerous.
They appeared to be planning their attacks. Not spur-of-the-moment violence, but calculated moves.
And, when the spreadsheet was taken into consideration, that person was most likely one of the staff.
Petra shot glances at the four harried employees as she passed them. They were young, barely more than teenagers, and they seemed confused and distressed as they tried to make the crowd listen.
She didn’t know anything about them. Almost the entire staff team had been brought on mere weeks before the festival. The people Petra genuinely knew and trusted could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
