The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,73

and barely had time to think of a cover story. Lying to her made me queasy, like at any point while we were speaking I could have projectile vomited. I tried to keep my cool and not say too much. She knew me well enough to know if I was hiding something. I didn’t turn on the light because she’d see my usually-under-control restless leg syndrome in full swing, and my eyes brimming with tears when I suggested I’d go the rest of the journey alone.

I hated this.

I hated myself for this.

But what was most important now was to win, so I could make it all worth it. She’d have money to go live in New York, and I’d have money for my parents, college, and my business. The knot forming in my stomach told me that I was doing something wrong for the right reason. Or maybe I was doing something right for the wrong reason. What scared me was I couldn’t tell which was which.

There was no one to discuss this with now. I was on my own. In this freezing, rainy gloom, I was all alone.

I would win alone.

* * *

Behind a barely-wide-enough pine tree, a deep feeling of unease set in as I watched a group of contestants pack up their camp stuff. There were four of them, and only one of me.

“We don’t have much farther to go. We might finish this evening, possibly even late afternoon,” the girl with the long braid and blue bandanna said. She had a thick German accent.

Her partner, a raggedy wilderness man, had a grizzled beard so bushy that forest animals could be hiding in there and he wouldn’t know it. As he took down their tents, he grunted to his campmates, “What’re you gonna do with the money if you guys win?”

The other two scruffy guys laughed. One yelled, “Coke,” as the other shouted, “Hos!” They fell back in laughter on their sleeping bags.

Bandanna Girl and Grizzly Beard Guy didn’t show any signs of repulsion as they packed up their cooking gear. They didn’t even notice when the two scruffalumps stood up and came around from behind and smacked them both in the wrists simultaneously with these bug zappers that looked like tennis rackets. The jolt made the couple yelp in pain. More importantly, though, their wristbands unclicked and fell on the ground.

Comrade betrayal, for coke and hos. These guys were brutal, attacking their own pack like that.

The woman screamed, “What the fuck, Hans? Andreas? We had a pact!”

The scruffier, doughier dude scratched his belly. “We did what we needed to win. Fuck the pact.”

Without hesitating, Bandanna Girl and Grizzly Beard Guy both jumped him. He went down hard, and they took turns pummeling his face. Instead of helping his partner, the coke guy grabbed his backpack and ran down the path as fast as any stoned person could, partnership be damned. Coke and hos all to himself. Too bad he didn’t have his map, which had been next to his bag but had blown toward me when he left his former tribe. He would’ve figured out he was running full speed the wrong way, heading in the direction of the cave.

I folded the map in my hand and stuck it in my cargo pants back pocket.

With these four contestants accounted for, it meant there were only two others left in the competition other than Kate and me. I didn’t know if they’d be together or competing separately. But with the coke guy heading the wrong way, I did know that these two other people were the only ones who could stop me from winning.

My heels dug deep into the muddy path, making me adjust my backpack every few steps and use my bo staff as a walking cane. Gnats and mosquitoes took turns landing on my face like it was a runway, so I took a brief break to douse myself in deep woods bug repellant. The smell of decaying leaves, pine, sweat, and Deet filled my nose with each inhale.

After a couple of hours of walking, I crept into the woods to break for water and food. Parking myself