‘Does she sound familiar to you at all?’
Scott looked thoughtful. ‘No, I don’t think so. But I don’t get it – why didn’t he tell us about the photo straight away? Why wait until this morning?’
‘Exactly. I can’t understand why he hid it from us. Unless—’ She faltered for a second.
‘Unless there are other things he’s not telling us,’ Scott finished.
As he said it, a bird of prey shrieked wildly overhead and Naya startled, nearly stumbled over. He took hold of her arm to steady her. ‘I’m OK – thanks,’ she said. ‘Yeah, exactly. But I can’t imagine Ben lying to us about something bigger, like...’ She swallowed. ‘Like what happened to Hannah – can you?’
Scott’s eyes widened; he shook his head. ‘No, of course not. But then, I can’t imagine anyone doing that. I mean, what kind of person would hurt someone like Hannah? Or pretend to be her in those messages – send those photos of her, know what she’d say, sound exactly like her, to throw us all off track?’
Naya let his words settle. Something in them had jarred, nudged something in her brain.
Sound exactly like Hannah.
Naya hadn’t thought of it like that before. But it was true. If someone else sent those messages, they’d have to know her pretty well, wouldn’t they? The kinds of things she’d say, how she’d have planned the retreat, the lay of the land here, where to find the maps and the satellite phone... Yes, you could get a good sense of Hannah’s personality from her hundreds of TikTok videos and Instagram reels – but what if it was more than that?
What if – and at the thought, Naya’s stomach dropped – what if one of the people hereknew much more about Hannah and this retreat than they’d been letting on?
And what if that same person had come here with a specific plan in mind – a plan to kill Hannah?
Surely there was only one person, out of the five of them, who’d been acting strangely; who’d been behaving as though they had something to hide; who didn’t quite seem to fit in here; whose reasons for being here seemed less plausible.
The hairs on her arms prickled and stood upright despite the clammy heat. She had the overwhelming urge to turn and bolt from the rest of them, to fend for herself out here alone. Her expression must have given her away.
‘What is it?’ said Scott. ‘What’s wrong?’
Naya’s eyes darted from Scott’s face to glance at the others in front of her: Carly helping Mira to keep walking, and Ben still in the lead. Then she found her resolve, trusting that feeling inside her that told her she could rely on Scott, and she said, quietly enough that the others couldn’t hear: ‘I don’t know –it’s just a thought. It probably doesn’t even make sense, but now I can’t shake it out of my head.’
‘OK,’ said Scott. ‘Do you want to share it with me?’
She chewed on the side of her lip. ‘It’s going to sound crazy, I think,’ she said.
He gave her a wide smile. ‘I promise I won’t think you’re crazy. Try me.’
Naya blew the air out of her cheeks. ‘What if one of us – one of the five of us, I mean – knew Hannahbefore?’ she said softly. She stopped herself from revealing the rest of her thought: that the most likely suspect, in her mind at least, was Ben. As soon as she’d said it, though, she realized how ridicu-lous her words sounded. She covered her hand with her mouth and shook her head. ‘I know it doesn’t make sense.’
Scott frowned. ‘Knew Hannah before? Why would you think that?’
Before she could tell him her reasoning, they saw Mira ahead of them, holding Carly’s arm, stumble and almost fall to the ground, before she caught her, steadied her. Holding on to her tightly, she turned to face the others.
‘Guys, we need to stop for a minute. Mira needs a breather.’
Merde. They’d only been walking for ten minutes, if that. Hopefully, they’d make it quick. She nodded, helped Mira to get comfortable on her rucksack and spent a moment wafting a huge leaf back and forth in front of her face in an attempt to cool her down. She looked terrible: pale and clammy. Naya did a quick check of her pulse; it was rapid, well over one hundred beats per minute even after a few moments at rest.Too fast.
Naya stood up, gestured to Ben, Scott and Carly. ‘We should try and keep going. Do you think we might be able to take itin turns carrying Mira, just for short stints? Perhaps Ben, Scott, you could hoist her onto your backs for a few moments each? I’m worried about her body giving out altogether.’
Scott frowned. ‘I guess we could try – Ben, what do you think? We can keep swapping.’
Ben nodded. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can take first shift, if you like. Here, you take the knife.’ Scott took it from his outstretched hand, and Ben walked to Mira’s side, spoke gently into her ear.
‘Before we go, I need to talk to you both.’ Carly had appeared next to Naya and Scott, and her whisper was urgent, loaded.
‘What is it?’ asked Naya.
Before she’d even asked, though, she thought she could guess what Carly wanted to say. Her pupils were large and black; they darted behind Naya and Scott, then back to their faces again. ‘I know you said to walk in this direction, and I don’t want to take over again – I know that didn’t exactly work out last time...’ She paused, took a deep breath in and out, swallowed. ‘But I’m worried we’re still lost – I’m not sure we’re going the right way.’
Naya inhaled deeply; felt the rainforest – the world – around her shift and tilt from side to side. ‘Scott?’ she whispered.
