Page 81 of The Hunt

As she spoke, she tilted her head backward to gesture at the other five in the cabin.

“And we just told them all about our grand plan to escape,” I said, heart skipping a beat. “If one of them is actually a mole, they could secretly radio that information back to the organizers.”

“And then we’ll probably be the first to get bounties put on us,” she said. “Fuck.”

“Hold on.” I sat up, resting on my elbows. “We can sneak a look at their backpacks to check their numbers.”

I already knew mine was fifty and Nikki’s was seventeen, but I hadn’t even thought of looking at the other’s bags when they arrived.

Nikki sighed. “I don’t know. The organizers aren’t stupid, so they’d probably give the mole a number in the middle somewhere, because fifty-one would just be too obvious. Some random player probably got it instead.”

“True.” I sagged on the blanket again. “God, you and Cheryl were right. You really can’t trust anyone in this game.”

“No shit. In the end, it all comes down to one person. Yourself,” she said. “But that’s only if you’re playing the originalgame. And we’re not doing that. We’re trying to leave the game, like you said earlier. So I still think this tunnel idea will work.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We already know we can trust each other. We just have to hope like hell that the others can be trusted too.”

“What are the odds that one of them is the mole?” I asked.

“Hmm. Let me think.” She frowned again. “If we’re just going by the five of them… there’s currently forty players left, including the mole, so that’s a one in eight chance that it’s one of them, right?”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“If we include the two of us, given our ‘trust no one’ rule, that’s… um…” She trailed off and sighed. “Shit, I’m too tired for this. I think it’s around a one in six chance.”

I glanced over at the others again. “God, I really hope it’s not one of us,” I muttered. “If it is, we’re so screwed.”

“Let’s go through everyone, one by one. See if we think we can trust them.”

“Okay.” I stuck my thumb up to start listing people on my hand. “Cheryl—no way she’s a mole. Absolutely no way. I trust her completely.”

Nikki nodded. “Yeah, she seems decent. I trust Kanako too. I don’t think the mole would let themselves get hurt.”

“Me neither. And Chris… we know he wasn’t lying about just getting out of prison, because that Peter guy said he saw the case on the news. So I doubt he’s working for the organization. I think he signed up because he genuinely thought it was a chance to get paroled.”

“Unless part of his ‘get out of jail free’ card included a deal with the organization to be the mole,” she said, raising a brow.

I groaned and put my fingers down. “Shit. Yeah.”

Nikki sighed. “This was a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have even brought it up,” she said. “I mean, no matter how much we thinkabout it… it really could be any one of us. It could even be you or me.”

“I guess we just have to hope itisn’tsomeone here, seeing as we already told them our plan.”

“No shit,” she said, grimacing. “But they all looked genuinely shocked when you mentioned the tunnels, right?”

“Yeah.”

“The mole wouldn’t be shocked, because they’d already know about the tunnels. So I’m going to hold out hope that we got lucky.” She cast a look toward the other five. “I think we’re safe with them.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I murmured.

We went quiet, trying to get a little bit of rest, but the tension in the air kept me wide awake. Every creak of the cabin and every rustle from outside drew my attention, reminding me of the awful situation.

Eventually, the clock on the cabin wall struck midnight, its loud chime slicing through the stillness like a warning. I froze at the sound, reality settling in.

It was time to go.

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