Page 146 of The Most Dangerous Games

He walks across the lawn and down toward the woods, where they’d all gathered for that phone conversation with Jimmy last night. It feels more like last month, or last year, after the events of the day.

At least Hannah is alive, he thinks.

It doesn’t lessen the hurt he’s feeling. He sits down in the grass, facing the trees.

He had thought he’d lost her once before. But then he felt they had found their way back to each other, if not with the same closeness he’d felt in those first days, when he’d been knocked off balance by her beauty and intelligence and sheer goodness.

Now she’s gone without so much as a goodbye, and there is a part of him—big part—that really does know he will probably never see her again.

He’s experienced so much loss since arriving in Ohio, they all have.

But he was the one carrying so much extra baggage around, and not just from one game to the next. All the secrets about himself he’d wanted to share with Hannah. And Alek. And Jack.

I really am the Artful Dodger.

These were the secrets he wished he could have shared with Reg Drummond, before losing him, too.

And even though he knows Hannah is alive, Wyatt has a partial understanding of what Jack had felt after he lost Elena.

Jack had told him about all the things he regretted leaving unsaid with Elena, and how that would always haunt him.

There is so much Wyatt wished he had told Hannah.

Maybe even the truth.

Wyatt stares at his hands. They won’t stop shaking. Fear doesn’t explain all of it.

Guilt does.

He sits here for a long time, feeling as alone as he ever has in his life.

Alone with his regrets.

And with his secrets.

101.

There are six competitors left:

Jack McHenry.

Alek Andrich.

Ant Tipton.

Wyatt Jordan.

Marcelo Oliveira.

Somehow, against every expectation, the sixth is Lin Zhi—the one who took the bullet.

“I’m not eliminating someone for taking a bullet,” The Host had told them at dinner last night.

“Still making up the rules as you go along?” Wyatt had asked.

The Host smiled. “No. Just choosing which ones to enforce.”

Alek is still processing Hannah being gone. But she is gone, and Jack is still here because of the decision she’d made to help him.