Page 90 of The Most Dangerous Games

He doesn’t look at him. “I tried,” Tipton says. It’s the first time Wyatt has ever heard him sound human.

Hannah’s voice is small. “Ant . . .”

Tipton finally looks at them both.

And what’s in his eyes isn’t the smug cruelty.

“He’s dead,” Wyatt whispers.

Tipton swallows hard. “Yes.”

Wyatt’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

Hannah moves closer to Wyatt and puts a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. Like she’s steadying herself too.

Wyatt looks down once—just once—because he has to.

He sees only distance and cloud and rock and knowledge.

His hero is gone.

He presses his fist to his mouth, voice breaking.

“Made it, Reg,” he says.

58.

Mammoth Cave

They can’t spot the boy right away, even as the water keeps carrying them along. The current carries them deeper before it carries them out.

Jack fights to keep his head above water, eyes burning from the cold and the grit and the panic of needing to see.

“The water gets deeper in these caves after storms!” Conner yells. “They must have had some beauts lately for it to rise like this.”

“Then he’s ahead,” Jack yells back, refusing the other option.

“Unless he got pulled under,” Conner says.

Jack’s eyes search the water up ahead, the cave walls seeming to narrow.

“He can’t be that far ahead of us,” Jack says. “He didn’t go into the water that much before we did.”

“Unless he hit something on his way down,” Conner says.

Then he asks Jack: “Can the kid swim?”

Jack says, “He made it through Chile.”

They see Rupert then.

He’s halfway out of the water somehow, maybe a hundred yards ahead of them, clinging to something against a steep bank, like he’s hanging from a tree branch.

He spots them at the same moment.

“JACK!” Rupert screams.

“Hang on!” Jack shouts back, and surges toward him.