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Facing only the ghost of his own reflection in the darkened passenger window sent renewed panic coursing through Silas’s veins, and he turned blindly, only to run directly into Meg again. In her own elevated surge of adrenaline and fear, she flailed at him wildly now, hitting him twice across the shoulder and chest before registering who he was.
“Meg!” He reached out to grab her. “It’s me!”
But holding her in his arms—again, after what had just happened—only seemed to panic Meg further. “I thought she’d come back here! God, why isn’t she here?”
She would have been, had she had any sense.
“Something must have happened to her!” Meg cried. “Up there, where we heard ... where ...”
Neither of them could say it.
Meg gripped his arms, her fingers digging into his flesh under his tee. “We need to fix this! God, we need to go back ...”
He shook his head. “Why? What good would that do?”
She looked incredulous. “Because it’s our fault, Silas!”
He took her by the shoulders, willing his hands to remain steady. Because Meg counted on him to be strong. Always. He couldn’t let her down now. But could he lie to her? It turned out he could.
“It’s not our fault,” he told her firmly, kind of shaking her shoulders. She had to believe this.
Meg nodded, hesitantly at first, and then with more vigor. “Right, right.” She took her first full breath since coming down from the woods. “And anyway, we don’t know where she went. But still, we shouldn’t have—”
Danny burst across the parking lot from the trail, completely spent from running, nearly hyperventilating himself.
“Where haveyoubeen?” Silas shot at him.
Danny waved his arms around in an effort to communicate while drawing in deep breaths. “Up there, where she left us! And then on the trail, now here.” He actually looked close to furious, though Silas couldn’t make out why. “What areyouguys doing? Keep looking!”
“Where?” Silas argued. “She isn’t down here!”
Danny yelled, “Well, we have to keep at it!”
“What the hell for, man? It’s pointless!” It was getting too dark to see, for one.
Meg turned her back on them, arms hugging herself, as they argued. Holding herself tightly against the fray, as if otherwise she might break apart, piece by piece.
Danny had already unraveled completely, but freaking out wouldn’t make Jessica magically reappear, shivering in her crop top and jean shorts. Ready to give them all shit. Silas needed to think.
He sent Danny to check the freestanding bathrooms—only for guests, but Jessica knew where they were—and then made for the lodge office, where a light still glowed at Uncle Les’s desk. Time to call in reinforcements.
But Meg pulled him back off the porch and into the shadows just as he reached for the service door. “We can’t tell him,” she hissed, her grip on his arm alarmingly strong.
“Are you crazy? We need help!”
“That’s not what I mean.” She leaned close. “Us. We can’t tell them about us.”
Why? Did she want to take it back? Jealousy made itself known, cutting like a whip. “Danny will find out eventually, Meg. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
But Meg gripped his arm intently, shaking her head hard as tears streamed. “No. We’ll tell him, for sure,” she said. “After Jessica is found.” She took a gulp of a breath, but it did little to keep the hysteria that was right there, on the edge of her voice, at bay. “But you were dating her, Silas. You broke up, sure, but you have history. And then we invited her here. How do you think it will look that you and I were ...” Eyes wild, she tried to compose herself enough to continue. “That we were together, when she went missing?”
He shook his head. “That’s crazy. This was an accident.” A nightmare, even, but it wasn’t acrime. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” he insisted. But of course he knew that wasn’t true.
Despair sank like a rock somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. He willed Meg’s logic to sink in along with it, diluting the awful cocktailof panic and pain already taking up residence there. If what she said had merit, ifmotivewas really at stake here, their time together in the woods could bounce back on her, too.
No way would Silas let that happen. When Danny returned from the bathrooms, his search fruitless, Silas pushed him toward the lodge door in front of him and Meg. “You do the talking,” he told him as he opened the door. Even though this lodge was Silas’s home. Even though they were answering to Silas’s family. Who better to represent them than the Boy Scout?
But Danny’s face registered surprised panic at this request, or maybe it was just the way his skin glowed almost white under the porch light that gave the expression of fear. He nodded once, a sharp, precise jut of his chin. He still looked pissed as well as fearful, no doubt blaming Silas for all of this. Which, of course, he should, even not knowing the half of it. “Yeah, okay,” he finally conceded. “Yeah. I can do that.”
