“You’re slipping,” he adds.
I don’t deny it.
It’s Brittany.
It’s her walking too close to the shoreline with her stubborn chin lifted.
It’s her not knowing when to back up because she’s tired of being told what to do.
If something’s taking girls near water, if Pearly Gates’s escalating, if somebody’s using the monster story to cover something darker, she’s in the middle of it whether she understands that or not.
Legend turns slowly, scanning the shoreline, the trees, the cabins. His face is hard in a way I recognize. The face he wears right before he makes the kind of decision people regret.
“This ain’t a camp out anymore,” he says finally. “We tighten everything.”
More men posted overnight. No one alone near water. Everyone moved closer to officer cabins.
It’s supposed to make it safer.
It just makes it smaller.
And smaller means pressure.
Pressure makes fractures worse.
That night, I stand outside the main cabin row watching lantern light flicker through windows.
Brittany’s inside the cabin we shared for one night, probably sitting stiff and quiet, pretending she doesn’t care that I’ve kept my distance. I did it for the right reasons. That’s what I keep telling myself.
But the lake don’t feel like a place where right reasons matter anymore.
I light a cigarette I don’t even want since I quit years ago and stare at the black stretch of water. Because the truth is, whatever’s out there, human, animal, myth, it ain’t the only thing circling.
Chapter 31
Brittany
I should’ve known it wouldn’t stay quiet. Nothing in Hell ever does. Why would it here?
The lake’s been wrong all day, too still and too loud at the same time. Boats moving in tight circles. Men combing tree lines. Radios crackling. Royal snapping orders at prospects who look like they’d rather believe in a monster than admit someone human might be hunting girls in their own backyard. Everybody’s on edge, and the day feels like it’s holding its breath.
Oaks hasn’t looked at me once. Not really.
He’s been in motion since dawn, like if he keeps moving he can outrun whatever’s tightening around us. Radio in hand. Boots in mud. Mouth firmly shut. Every time I catch his profile across camp, he looks carved out of duty and iron, and I hate that part of me still watches him like he might glance back and soften. Like the other night meant something he can’t fake his way out of.
He doesn’t. Just like he didn’t come back last night, and I slept alone in a crumbled bed that smelled like I made a huge mistake.
By late afternoon, the heat turns heavy and mean. The sun dips, but the humidity won’t break. I can’t stand another second of the whispers and the stares and the girls who smirkwhen I pass like they know exactly where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I need air that ain’t filtered through judgment.
I walk down toward the water alone.
The shoreline’s quieter here, away from the cabins and the main fire pit, away from the radios and the men calling coordinates. It’s just cicadas screaming from the trees and the soft lap of water against dock posts. Herrington Lake looks harmless from here, shiny and blue, sunlight scattering across it like glitter, like it’s a tourist brochure instead of a crime scene with good PR.
I hear boots before I see her.
Bethany doesn’t announce herself. She doesn’t call my name or perform for an audience. She just walks up and stops a few feet away, arms crossed, posture loose like we’re having coffee instead of a reckoning. That calm is what scares me, because I’ve seen women like her in Hell. They don’t need volume. They’ve got venom.
“You’re braver than I thought,” she says mildly. “Standing so close to that water.”
