“You want to stay? Even withthat?” Claire waved her hand in the general direction of the body.
“Very much not a fan ofthat, as you know,” Mariana said. “But I’ve been thinking about it.... There’s no reason for the killer to still be here. They did what they came to do. Sticking around the scene of the crime? Good way to get caught. They’re probably miles from here, busily hiding any evidence that they were ever at the Lake House.”
That... was possible. But should they bet their lives on a possibility?
“I think we should focus on making it easier for rescuers to find us,” Mariana said. “Light your signal fire. Write SOS in the sand. Shout. Bang homemade drums. Everything we can think of to draw attention to ourselves. One of us can stay by the shore and watch for boats, while another one waits for a plane at the house—Why are you looking at me like that?” She patted her hair. “Did I sprout an extra head?”
Claire closed her mouth, suddenly aware she’d been gawking at her with her mouth dropped open and eyes wide. Had Mariana not seen a single horror movie ever? “Sorry. Just... We can’t split up. Much too dangerous. As for the rest... we can’t pretend it’s safe here just because it’s inconvenient to worry about a killer.”
“If some psychopath with a gun wants to kill us, we can’t stop them. So I vote we don’t worry about that and instead focus on the things wecando.”
Not... worry? About being murdered?
Reyva shook her head. “There might besomethingwe can do about it. Like run. Or hide. Or not paint a giant target on our backs that says, ‘I’m fine with dying horribly.’”
“I’m not ‘fine with dying’ in any way,” Mariana said. “But if we’re able to be rescued, that solves all our problems—murderers, dehydration, starvation, even mosquitoes.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss all the myriad silly details of survival.
Claire turned over her words in her head. Maybe Mariana had a point. Or at least part of a point. “She’s right,” Claire said at last.
Now Reyva stared at her.
“Sort of,” Claire amended. “Look, we have two goals with diametrically opposed solutions: we have to stay hidden so we don’t get killed, and we have to be visible so we get rescued and don’t die.” She didn’t like that those were the facts, but she was trying to consider the problem from as many angles as she could, given the number of unknowns. It was the only thing making her feel as if they had any control over any of this. “So we have to take whatever measures we can that fulfill each goal without torpedoing the other goal. We stick together. We take turns on lookout. Wedon’tlight a signal fire that could be seen by anyone in the air, on the water, or in the woods, but wedospell out SOS on the shore and on the airstrip so that overhead rescuers will find us. And we boil water with as small and inconspicuous a fire as we can.”
Both Reyva and Mariana were nodding.
“Let’s do it,” Reyva said.
“Compromise for the win!” Mariana shouted.
Claire and Reyva shushed her.
“Sorry,” Mariana whispered.
All of them watched the woods for a minute, but no one burst out to murder them.
Choosing a stretch of beach-like shore, they located stones and used them to spell out the lettersSOS. Claire kept one eye on the forest as they worked. She couldn’t shake the prickly feeling that they were being watched.
It’s just birds, she told herself.Or squirrels.
Or bears. Or wolves. Or mountain lions.
When they finished, they loaded up their packs with the clothes they’d used for bedding—Mariana took the longest, stuffing her favorites into her pack and abandoning her two suitcases by the SOS in place of punctuation marks—and then they started up the trail that led to the remains of the Lake House. It felt as if even the birds were more hushed today. The wind barely rustled the leaves.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to face it again,” Mariana said.
Claire definitely wasn’t, even though she knew how badly they were going to need drinkable water. It was all well and good to think of plans in the abstract, but now that they were on their way to see the Lake House again, all she wanted to do was cower by the dock. She’d never been a spectacularly calm person, but this was a whole other level.
Usually when she was on the verge of losing control, her father would lob brainteasers at her, like the classic one about a farmer who had to bring a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river.... The solution was chicken first, then fox but bring back the chicken, then corn, then lastly chicken again. Or you put the fox in a cage, the chicken in a cage, and quit having free-range animals in your rowboat. But without her dad providing puzzles for her to solve, she was stuck trying to soothe herself on her own. She settled on silently reciting the Fibonacci sequence, each number the sum of the preceding two numbers. It escalated from zero plus one soothingly quickly. She was just about to add 196,418 to 317,811 when they reached the Lake House.
It didn’t look any better in daylight. The Lake House was still burned to the ground. At least it smelled better, and there wereno more wisps of smoke. They tucked their packs out of sight in the bushes and, without speaking, crossed the lawn to the remains of the structure.
A maple tree was still standing beside the collapsed walls. A few shriveled leaves still clung to the blackened branches. It must have been an old tree—it was wide enough that she couldn’t have wrapped her arms around it if she tried. It could have been hundreds of years old. Seeing it destroyed was nearly as sad as seeing the house itself.
“One of us makes the SOS on the airstrip, one of us searches for useful items, and one of us keeps watch,” Reyva suggested. “All of us stay in visual range.”
“I vote the MMA girl keeps watch,” Mariana said. “I’ll make the SOS.”
That left one job. “I’ll... search,” Claire said.
