“Bad idea if we drink it all?” Reyva asked.
Yes, it was, but... “We need it,” Claire said firmly. Maybe now that the killer was gone, they could try for a fire again and boil more. They could even make an enormous fire and hope it worked as a signal fire to draw any hopefully-non-murderer with a boat.
Maybe things are looking up, Claire thought.
She immediately wished she hadn’t had that thought. She’d probably jinxed them all. After all, they were still stranded.
And now they were four.
I’d just gotten used to the three of us, she thought. Glancing atJack, she wondered how their new addition was going to change their group. He certainly couldn’t be happy to be stuck here with them. What would he think of her? Of them? Was he going to be a help, or a burden? Would he judge her and make the others see her the way she feared they would? She’d started to feel so close to Reyva and Mariana—was he going to break that apart?
That had happened before—a girl named Sonia, who Claire had nearly opened up to. They’d started to become friends, but then Claire had bumped into her at Starbucks while Sonia was with a group of kids from school.... She’d heard them whispering about her as she left, telling her about how Claire had melted down at the homecoming dance. She hadn’t vomited that time, but the paramedics had come, in front of everyone....
“Hey, Jack!” Mariana called. “Any chance you have a phone with you? A working phone? Like...” To Reyva and Claire, she said, “What do they call those phones that work anywhere?”
“Satellite phones,” Claire said.
“Do you have a satellite phone?” Mariana called.
At last he left the dock and joined them by the boulders. He sank down in the wet pebbly sand and put his face in his hands. “No phone. No boat. No clue what to do.”
Mariana patted him on the back. “Don’t worry. We know what to do.”
Claire asked, “We do?”
“We stick together, all four of us,” Mariana said cheerfully. “And we try not to die.”
Twelve
Try not to die.
That was the key, wasn’t it.
“He expects us to die,” Claire said. “That’s why he left.” He could have stayed and shot them, but it would have taken time to hunt them down. And it would’ve meant more murdered bodies in the woods that could be discovered and investigated. If they died of natural causes, on the other hand, then he was in the clear for their deaths.
He might have even hidden or buried the program director’s body by now. That would have been the logical move. Dispose of that, and then leave the three of them, plus Jack—the only ones who knew about her—to die of exposure. Neat, tidy, done.
“He knew he was taking our best, possibly only, way to escape,” Claire said, “and he left us here to starve and die.” She liked that theory a lot better than the other possibility: that he was running from the wild man. Especially since the wild man had been unarmed. It was much more likely the killer was seizing the opportunity to flee the scene of his crime than that he was fleeing an unarmed, unwashed, and unhinged man.
“Yeah, he’s not nice,” Mariana said. “Got that.”
Claire winced. She wasn’t saying this right. “What I meant... He left us to die, so you’re right: all we have to do now isnotdie. He narrowed the problem. And that’s good. Well, notgood, but...” She trailed off. Nothing about this wasgood, but maybe it was a solvable problem?
To Jack, Reyva said, “Who knows you’re here? Anyone who will send a rescue when you don’t come back? Parents? Friends?”
“It’s just my dad and me, and I... didn’t tell him I was coming.” Jack was still staring across the water, as if he expected the boat to reappear.
“Why did you come?” Reyva asked. “Did you know we were in trouble?”
Good question. Why was he here? Claire hadn’t thought to ask. He hadn’t been scheduled to return until August. Maybe she should be more suspicious of their new addition.
“I didn’t... I...” He turned to look at Mariana and blushed bright red. “I came to see you. You said... Well, I just thought a visit... You asked me to... I had no idea the Lake House... I had no idea.”
Okay, that’s more embarrassing than suspicious, Claire thought.He’s harmless.And maybe a little likable? He sounded as awkward as she usually felt.
Mariana flashed a smile at him, and he reddened more, the blush spreading down his neck. “Very sweet. And it wasalmosta heroic rescue. If you hadn’t left the boat key in the ignition, we’d all have been cheering for you. As it is, you’re cute enough that we forgive you.” She patted him on the cheek.
Still blushing furiously, he faced the lake again. “I didn’t expect—”
