Chapter 2: The Look on a Man Whose Plan Has Failed
PART 2 ⬇️
I followed the red markers for what felt like hours.
Every step on my swollen ankle sent pain straight up my spine, but I kept moving.
Stopping meant dying.
And I refused to give them that.
When the trail finally met gravel, I nearly collapsed with relief.
A supply truck was parked at the road's edge.
The driver took one look at my torn blouse and wrapped hands and said nothing — he simply opened the door.
I asked him to take me to the lodge.
Not the hospital.
The lodge.
Because I needed to see their faces before they saw mine.
I heard them before I reached the entrance.
Richard's voice carried through the open window, low and steady, the way it always sounded when he was managing a situation.
"She went over the side.
We tried to reach her.
There was nothing we could do."
Then Julian: "We need to call the board tonight.
Before the news gets out."
I stood in the doorway.
Mud on my dress.
Bl0od dried on my palm.
Both shoes gone.
Celeste turned first.
The color left her face completely.
Richard turned a second later — and for just one moment, before he rearranged his expression into something that looked like relief, I saw exactly what he felt.
It wasn't joy that I was alive.
It was the look of a man whose plan had just failed.
"Eleanor—" he started.
"Don't," I said quietly.
"Don't say a word."
Then my phone — still in my dress pocket, still somehow working — lit up with a message from a number I didn't recognize.
*I have everything recorded.
All of it.
You need to see this before they destroy it.*
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Eleanor isn't safe yet — and what that message contains is worse than anyone imagined.
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