Page 49 of Close Your Eyes and Count to 10

Malinka and the Extreme team had disappeared.

The trailer generator roared to life.

Adele wondered if she was the only one who was left feeling like a strange pall had settled over everything. Then she realized the difference between her and the others. She was a mom. The stakes, for her, were higher than they were for anyone else here.

Adele returned to her tent, shouldered her pack, light with just a bottle of water, some jerky, a small first-aid kit. She attached her backpack light and slipped from the tent, moving soundlessly toward the narrow path that led to the casitas.

Though they were just approaching noon, the heavy cloud cover and thick foliage made it feel like night. Somewhere a bird called, long and low. The trees and foliage seemed in constant motion, shifting, whispering in the wind, frequent scurrying in the underbrush.

A storm was coming. She was receiving weather updates from Blake, who was tracking the system as it made its way toward the island. But Adele didn’t fear the natural world. People with all their secrets and lies,hidden agendas, the masks they wore…that’s what scared her.

Check out the casitas for your hiding place, suggested Blake.That’s where I would hunker down if I was playing.

The paver stones were jagged and crooked as teeth, years of neglect allowing them to settle unevenly into the red earth beneath. Thick weeds had pushed up; vines reached treacherously across. Adele kept her footing light, her eyes on the ground in front of her, knowing that one wrong step could lead to a trip—a tweaked knee, a twisted ankle. Any injury could be the difference between winning and losing.

The path wound, studded by rusted ground lamps that no longer worked. More movement in thick woods all around her, skuttling.

Her own breathing was loud in the silence.

Up ahead, the pool deck. Porticos grown over, tables long toppled covered with creeping vines, rusted chairs tilted every which way, overgrown with weeds, the pool itself full of garbage, debris, even a small tree that had grown up through the plaster bottom. Nature will take itself back. The made things we leave behind will be slowly swallowed by the earth. Something comforting in that, right? That we can only do so much damage. That the temporary nature of our existence limits our harm.

Just down one of the paths that slivered off the pool deck she knew she’d find the casitas. Spacious cabins with multiple rooms. She’d already been here, in a sense, using Blake’s WholeEarthNow image to inspect the property from above. She knew the place as well as she could from a distance.

It must have been stunningly beautiful once, a paradisial hideaway for the very rich. She’d cast about for photos online and found a pdf of a back issue ofElegant Travelermagazine. Gorgeously appointed rooms, poolside cabanas with flowing gauzy curtains, marble lobby with a tiered crystal chandelier. No expense had been spared in the pursuit of a luxurious setting.

Real-estate mogul Enrico Bello borrowed way too much money to build Esperança. He’d erected this behemoth in an effort to bring Americans and Europeans to a hidden paradise. But limited flights from the US and too-high prices for most European travelers had kept the property from prospering. Staff, unpaid, left their posts. Things slowly fell to seed. Less than five years from opening to abandonment. Now forty years later, it crumbled, a monument to failure.

She’d known men like Enrico, men whose ambition surpassed their means, their abilities. She’d married one. Adele was familiar with the feeling of picking her way through the ruins of a once-beautiful thing.

The sound of movement up ahead stopped her in her tracks. Not animal scurry. Footsteps, hard and quick. Adele shifted off the path and crouched in the foliage. She made herself still and small, willing herself to disappear into the heavy shadows.

“What are we doing?” A male voice. Tense and angry. “This is…wrong.”

Hector. One of Maverick’s crew.

He stopped just feet from where she had hidden herself. She held her breath and watched as he took something from his pack, which he wore on the front of his body like a marsupial pouch.

“This wasn’t the plan,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to be likethis.”

He was obviously on the phone, talking to someone through his earbuds.

“Alex is gone. Angeline looks like she’s about to stroke out from stress. Mav is just…unhinged. It’s not fun anymore.”

Adele watched as he placed a small wireless camera carefully in the crook of a branch, affixing it with some kind of gummy substance. Expertly, he arranged foliage around the lens. No one would see it as they were passing by in the dark.

Okay, so the game was rigged. Good to know. She’d figured as much, she just hadn’t known how. This was why her father always insisted on recon before any excursion.He’d study trails online, scan through hiker and climber reviews, get all the data he could about the weather, the area. He had taught Adele that knowing your environment was critical to success.

Hector, a bulky shadow, glanced around, uneasy. Maybe he sensed her staring at him. His eyes grazed over her hiding space but didn’t stop.

Was that who she’d seen last night? Maybe he’d been setting up cameras in the hotel, or even planting the book and the cigarettes, to remind her of Miller, to throw her off-kilter. Another thought had occurred to her, too. Something Agent Coben had said, about how people on the run could rarely stay away. How they had their ways of getting in touch. But it wasn’t possible. Was it?

“No,” he said. “No. I’m with you. Of course I am. It’s just—”

One of her superpowers since becoming a mom was the almost sixth sense she’d developed to detect when someone was lying. It hadn’t kicked in with her husband until it was far too late, unfortunately. But with her own kids and those who found their way to her office for this or that infraction or issue, she was like a tuning fork that vibrated in the presence of deception. Was it the way his voice came up an octave? Or the tension in that secondno? The way his words sounded like a plea. Who was he still with—or not? What was he talking about?

But then Hector kept moving up the path, back toward the campsite. His voice growing softer, words becoming inaudible. Adele waited.

She was about to shift in her spot when, down the path in the direction she was headed, she saw another figure step out in front of Hector. Slim, light-footed, and hooded, the form seemed to slip from the darkness between the trees, then stand in the center of the path, arms akimbo. Words were exchanged. Adele couldn’t hear, though she edged closer, straining to catch the words.

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