After they finished eating, they all lay back on the floor. In a few minutes, they’d send the first group out to the cliff and the unlit signal fire to watch for possible boats.
But for the moment, with the afternoon sun streaming in though the leaded windows, it was easier to feel safe, or at least safer, than in the dead of night. And maybe Sean and Brittlyn were the only targets. If they could just hold on long enough, they were bound to be rescued.
“What do we do now?” Jude asked, wrecking the moment of peace.
Dude groaned for all of them. “We’ve got to set a watch schedule, dude.”
“And, um, we can’t . . .” Shelley cleared her throat. “We can’t just leave those bodies much longer. Can we?”
The unwanted thought of heat and decomposition bloomed in Plum’s mind.
“Ew,” Sofia said. “No, but ew.”
“There’s a walk-in fridge in the kitchen.” Warix spoke around his finger as he methodically chewed off his nails. “If you don’t mind bodies where you cook,” he added.
“Okay, that was vivid.” Shelley closed her eyes and gave a shiver. The bangles on her wrists chimed with the movement.
“Just sayin’.” Warix shrugged.
“Okay, who’s going to sit with the signal fire?” Jalen squinted out the windows. “We shouldn’t take any chances leaving it alone. It would suck to have gone to all the trouble of building it and not be there to actually light it if a boat goes by.”
“Several someones would be better,” Shelley offered. “For safety and to help watch.”
“We could take turns,” Jude offered. “In our groups from before. Right? That’s a good idea, right?”
Dude reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Yeah, dude. Good thinking.”
“Yeah!” he chirruped happily.
It was disconcertingly like Jude had become their mascot somehow. As if without talking about it, the group had all agreed that there was no way he could be the killer.
Sofia leaned over to Plum and Marlowe. “Actual cinnamon roll,” she whispered.
“A dumpling,” Marlowe agreed.
Plum nodded. “Must protect.”
A jarring two-note digital tone, almost like an AMBER Alert, suddenly went off all around the room. Plum and her friends jumped.
Across the circle from them, Shelley clung to Cici.
Cici looked perplexed. She pulled out her cell phone. “They’re all going off,” she yelled over the alarm.
Plum dug her phone out of her back pocket. The screen was alight with a video clip of a blazing fire.