Stubbing out the rest of her cigarette, Marlowe braced her hands on the kitchen counter between moundsof dirty dishes, and inhaled deeply. Heather wasn’t defenseless. She’d have to catch her by surprise. The edge of a cast iron pan bit into her elbow as she folded her arms on the counter. Marlowe straightened. Something quiet, something discrete.
The heft of cast iron in her hand could be explained as self-defense, not murder.
It rode next to her on the bench seat all the way to Camp Atonement, leaving small smears of grease with every jostle and slip of the truck as Marlowe floored it through the recently flooded forest.
She felt the snag of tires bogged down in mud a second before her truck lurched and slowed. Marlowe swore as the truck fishtailed and tires spun helplessly in slick mud. Engine hot, the truck sputtered, and she cursed again and let up on the pedal.
She rolled her shoulders, shaking away nerves.
Cabin 13 loomed in her truck headlights, a husk of what it had been 9 years ago. The furthest cabin from the camp center, it had been used as an overflow space, briefly as storage, then as a prison.Quarantinewas what the director told the others.
Heather had played the perfect director’s daughter, bringing Marlowe meals, slipping flattened origami boatsunder the door, marching a line of mossy-brown pebbles along the windowsill like a row of scooped-out hazel eyes.
Marlowe flipped the brights on the truck, illuminating the full rotted truth of the cabin. An ugly watermark still striped the side.
Right under the top bunk.
Paper boats made of Bible verses had cornered Marlowe, and she’d been stuck in that stinking, drowned cabin for two days before the lock broke from the outside and she escaped into sewage-soaked floodwaters.
Marlowe grit her teeth and wrenched the truck into reverse, stomping on the gas, and the Chevy bucked before lurching out of the mud. She chose her path carefully, this time avoiding the low areas.
Marlowe jammed it in park outside of cabin 9 and stared at the cast iron pan.
“Jesus Christ.” The thing was so heavy it would be as effective to lob a brick at Heather. “Don’t let her talk,” Marlowe whispered to herself. “Get in, wait for her to get back from the campfire, get out and drag her back to Pike. Easy. Sure.”
Marlowe swiped her hair away in her hoodie and wrinkled her nose at the sheen of sweat sticking to her collarbones. She stared at herself in the shoddy rearviewmirror for one more moment before she hauled the cast iron across the seat with her before she could back out.
Woodsmoke hazed the air as Marlowe quietly clicked the truck door shut behind her and ghosted through the forest. A dark path curved into the towering pines beyond the cabin, leading to the rest of the camp. Marlowe would have a perfect vantage point from the two square windows.
A number 9 was hewn into a rough slab of wood and tacked to the cabin exterior with a rusted nail. An orange tabby cat lurked under the pine-board porch.
Marlowe experimentally swung the pan and itswooshedheavily through the air. The cat blinked green eyes at her and twitched his striped tail.
“What’re you looking at?” Marlowe made a quiet hissing noise and the cat leisurely stretched and melted into the dark forest.
Good. No witnesses.
A lantern swung from the peaked roof and cast Marlow in a harsh light as she stepped onto the spongy, needle-flecked porch. Sticks lashed together with twine made 9 crude crosses nailed across the doorway. A pale-yellow glow struggled through the grimy windows.
Marlowe smiled wryly. Heather didn’t turn off lights at the motels either.
Swallowing the sudden bitter taste in her mouth, she tried the iron door handle. Cabin 13 was still the only one with a lock. Danger, of course, could never be found at Camp Atonement unless it was of the perverse, lustful nature.
Heather’s cabin door gave way with a soft creak.
A figure hunched in the corner.
Marlowe’s stomach dropped.
Short, wavy blonde hair. Plaid shirt. A man, not Heather. A man, sitting in Heather’s cabin, on Heather’s bed.
He turned. “Did you find your—”
Behind gold-rimmed square glasses, his wide blue eyes grew even wider. His lips parted slightly, the crumbled remnants of a s’more sticky in the corner.
Marlowe stared. The cast iron pan dragged against her side, the handle hot and slick under her grip.
A lone owl shrieked outside.
