THAT night, she thought a lot about her encounter with Judith, and her earlier experience with Dylan. Was Dylan as challenged by Alice’s defensiveness and suspiciousness as Alice was by Judith’s? The thought made her feel a little guilty.
It also made her feel a lot heartsore, because she couldn’t make it up to him. Dylan was hundreds of miles away.
After she walked out of the Red Team cabin that night, her gaze was immediately drawn to the top of the tree line and the distant bluff. She couldn’t see it because of the woods, but the castle was up there, empty as a shell without its master.
A sharp, poignant feeling rose in her chest. It took her a moment to recognize it as potent longing. She missed him. Like hell.
And she’d just seen him this morning.
A huge red warning flag unfurled in her mind’s eye.
You are making the biggest mistake of your life, caring about him.
“Hey, Alice,” Dave Epstein called out to the right of her, interrupting her self-lecture. She turned to see Dave and Kuvi walking toward her.
“Some of us are going into town to the Lakeside Tavern. They’re supposed to have good pizza. Gina Sayre lives in Michigan, so she brought her car to camp,” Kuvi said, referring to another counselor. “You up for it?”
Alice hesitated. Dylan had said he wanted her to stay in behind a locked door tonight. But surely he was overdoing his cautionary measures.
Besides, Dylan Fall didn’t control her.
“Yeah, sounds good,” Alice agreed, falling into step beside her friends.
Of course nothing sinister happened that night, and Alice managed to put her longing for a man that was way out of her league on the backburner—for a few hours, anyway—while she drank a few beers and socialized with her fellow counselors at a cute lakeside pizza place. She had a good time sitting on the back patio with her friends, even if she sensed Thad’s gaze on her cheek way too often. She hoped the fact that she treated Thad exactly the same as her other friends sent a gentle message to him.
Well, nothing majorly sinister happened that night, anyway. Something odd did. The more Alice thought about it later, the more it bothered her.
She walked with Kuvi, Thad, Dave, and Gina to the car when their night came to an end. The parking lot was dimly lit. Alice was carrying a to-go pizza box, and the menu attached to it flew off, skittering away in the lake breeze. The others kept going, but Thad halted.
“Go ahead, I’ll catch up,” Alice assured him. The two of them hadn’t really had a chance to rehash the conversation they’d started before Dylan interrupted them last night, and Alice wasn’t really up for doing so at the moment. Thad looked a little disappointed, but nodded once before he jogged to catch up with the others.
Alice chased after the wind-tossed menu. After she’d caught it, she spotted a garbage can at the edge of the parking lot. As she turned away from disposing of the paper, her gaze glided past a parked car. A man was slumped behind the wheel. She recognized the averted profile. He turned to her suddenly, maybe sensing her attention on him. An uncomfortable jolt went through her as she briefly locked stares with Sal Rigo, one of the Durand managers.
She hurried across the dark parking lot, her skin tingling, eager to catch up with her friends.
Was Rigo following them? They’d been told several times by Sebastian Kehoe that their personal time was their own. But was that just a Durand ploy,
in order to observe them when their guard was down?
As soon as they all got in the car and exited the parking lot, Alice told the other four about seeing Rigo. Everyone was surprised, but Dave got mad.
“Figures,” Dave stated bitterly. “They’re always spying on us.”
“I saw Rigo following us when we left the beach this afternoon,” Kuvi said to Thad and Alice. “He creeps me out. I’ve seen him lurking around our cabin, too.”
“Really?” Alice asked Kuvi, who nodded.
“But Rigo was probably just waiting for someone after they ate at the Lakeside, right?” Gina reasoned. “It’s a popular spot in Morgantown. Plus, as a Durand employee, Rigo probably lives around here. Over half the executives they employ do. He might be a regular at the Lakeside, for all we know.”
“I didn’t see him anywhere in that place. Did any of you?” Alice asked the others.
All of them shook their heads.
“Well he didn’t come there to admire the view of the parking lot,” Alice mumbled, staring blindly out the window.
What if the counselors were being followed?
What if the Durand managers—or Sebastian Kehoe himself—knew about her nocturnal meetings with Dylan Fall?