Page 81 of Five Survive

“I was a coward.” She bit her lip. “I made my choice and I pretended not to know him, that he was a random guy bothering me in the parking lot, like you thought. And then everything happened.” Reyna winced, like she was seeing it all again, playing just below the surface of her red-raw eyes. “I couldn’t find the courage to do it, to choose him. And he was so hurt after, he texted me that night, saying he couldn’t believe I’d pretended not to know who he was. And then I didn’t hear from him, until…until…” She didn’t need to finish, they knew the rest. “He’s dead, and it’s my fault, because I was a coward and let it all happen.”

Red shuffled, flinching as she made a rustle that drew Oliver’s eyes, thinking over it all, sifting through. Reyna hadn’t killed Jack, though, had she? It was Oliver who hit him, who caused the slow bleed in his brain. Neither of them meant for him to die. But no one could say Reyna was the one who’d killed him, right? She loved him, and she blamed herself, and that must be a terrible weight to carry. Almost like—

“Yes, Reyna, it is all your fault,” Oliver replied after a long pause, voice clipped and flat. “It’s all your fault. You made me do it.”

“I didn’t, I didn’t…” Reyna puffed out her cheeks to control her staccato breath. “I’m sorry for everything. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” She looked away from Oliver, eyes skipping from Maddy to Red, as though seeing them for the first time, stepping away from that horrible dark memory into the horrible dark here and now, in this RV. “He had four brothers,” she explained. “I never met them, but it could be them. He said one of them liked to hunt deer. Maybe they found our messages on his phone, wondered why I never reached out, or went to the funeral. Or maybe they suspected there was more to the story, about how he’d hurt his head, about that last message he sent me. That’s the secret they want: how Jack died.”

The static seemed to grow louder then, in Red’s grip, even though it couldn’t have. She was keeper of the voice, and did they now know whose voice it was? Waiting for them on channel three.

Oliver brought his hands together, like a crack of thunder or the clap of a rifle. Twice. Two shots. The sound burying itself inside Red’s bones.

He pushed up from his booth. “Well, Reyna, you don’t have to worry aboutfinding the couragenow.” He coughed, a smile still stretched across his lips, splitting the near-red flesh into seams. “You and I are over. I could always do better than you.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Oliver. I really am.”

He brushed off her apology, looking away before she was finished. Reyna was no longer welcome on his side of the RV, in the us ofusversusthem.A cold shiver passed up Red’s spine, even though it was hot in here now, sweat prickling by the seams of her shirt where they pressed into her armpits. The six of them cooking inside this tin can. But the shiver meant something, a realization that Red could put into words. Now there was no one left who could control Oliver. Unless Maddy…Red tried to catch Maddy’s eyes, but she wasn’t looking, picking at the loose skin by her fingernails.

“If that’s why we’re here”—Reyna was speaking, looking between Arthur and Simon now—“I will face the consequences. I’ll tell him what happened, what I did. I’ll end this.”

“Oh no you won’t,” Oliver snapped. The smile was gone now, but his mouth wouldn’t close, hanging open between words. Pupils still too large in his once-golden-brown eyes. “You’re not the one who hit him, I am. If they’re looking for a killer, then it’s me they’re looking for, not you. And I’m not dying because you decided to fuck a bartender, Reyna.” A globule of spit flew out with her name. He pointed at the walkie-talkie in Red’s hands. “We’re not telling him anything. This is your fault, Reyna, no one else’s. If anyone should have to walk out of this RV it should be you. But I am not, are you listening?! We don’t tell them a thing.”

“We have to,” Reyna said, a quake in her lower lip. She bit down on it. “It’s the right thing to do, tell him what he wants to know. He said he’d let the others go. He might let us go too, if he knows it was all an accident, that Jack wasn’t supposed to die.”

“I don’t know,” Simon said, uncertainly. “He killed Don and Joyce out there for nothing. I don’t think he’s the forgiving type.”

“No,” Oliver growled. He moved past Red, toward the kitchen,glancing at the timer on the oven. “It’s three-forty-five now. We are going to sit here until sunrise, until six a.m., and then his game is over. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“I can’t, Oliver,” Reyna said, keeping her tone steady, treading around the explosion again. “Someone might get shot. I can’t live with that. Red, can you pass me the walkie-talkie, please?”

“No, Red,” Oliver barked. “Give me the walkie-talkie.” He stretched out his hand, open and waiting.

Red looked, from Reyna to Oliver, the walkie-talkie hissing in her cupped hands, like a coiled snake, like a warning.

Here she was again, standing in the middle of them, trapped in both lines of sight. She clutched the walkie-talkie to her chest.

“Red, don’t be an idiot,” Oliver hissed, trying to lower his voice. “Give me the walkie-talkie. I’m in charge here. You know me. You don’t know Reyna. None of us do, apparently.”

“Red, please.” Reyna’s voice in her other ear. “I’m trying to do the right thing. To save us.”

Red’s eyes jumped to Maddy’s, but there were no answers for her there, only fear, widening, widening.

“Red?”

“Red?”

Left or right.

Move or don’t move.

Reyna or Oliver.

“Red?”

Oliver’s eyes burned into hers, past them, into the unknowable things behind, like he could see her thoughts racing back and forth, trying to pull them his way.

The static from the speakers fizzed against her too-tight fingers,tongue pressed against the back of her teeth.

Which one?

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