real.
He texted Rick: It’s raining! I can’t find her if the dirt is wet! We have to cancel this round.
This time, Rick texted him back: Bad luck does not alter the rules.
I no longer have a 50/50 chance. The odds have changed.
His phone rang.
“The odds are calculated when I notify you about a challenge,” said Rick. “If they change, that’s part of the game. If a park ranger catches you and kicks you out of the park, that also impacts your odds, but we don’t give you a free pass for it. Stop whining and keep searching.” He hung up.
Ethan didn’t feel like he’d been whining, but now was not the time to protest. It was a moderate rain and not an all-out thunderstorm, so at least he had that going for him as he continued to search.
It was almost 2:30. Ethan was completely drenched and the ground was mud. It was possible that he’d walked right over her grave without realizing it. He had to hope that there was some other clue besides freshly overturned dirt, but he had yet to see anything even remotely helpful.
He wasn’t sure how deep he was into the park. A mile? Mile and a half? His technique was to quickly search both sides of the road until the shovel, lying on the pavement, was almost out of view with the flashlight beam, then go back to retrieve it and start the process again.
Was he doing something wrong? Or had the rain turned it into a no-win game? He couldn’t just start digging through random patches of mud.
Maybe his mistake was searching too thoroughly. Maybe he was just supposed to walk along the road, making good time, until he reached the obvious spot.
He decided to try that. Walking through the muck simply wasn’t going to work.
Ethan had been walking for an hour. This goddamn park went on forever.
There’d been some decision points along the way. Three hiking trails. The primitive camping area. A playground. He’d checked out the camping area and the playground, but skipped the trails, deciding that they couldn’t expect him to take a lengthy detour and have a 50% chance of finding her.
Unless they thought there was a 50% chance he’d take the detour. Fuck this game.
He was exhausted, but he couldn’t take a break. He didn’t know how long the woman had. If the difference between her life and death was the time he’d spent sitting on his ass, he’d never forgive himself.
Ethan went back to pick up the shovel. His legs collapsed underneath him and he tumbled off the side of the road, splattering into the mud.
Fine. He’d take a one-minute break.
He just sat there, soaked and miserable, with the shovel on his lap.
He wanted to just lie back and go to sleep, perhaps drowning himself and ending this nightmare. Instead, he got up, then fell again, dropping the flashlight. He held it up to the rain to rinse off the lens, picked up the shovel, and suddenly noticed something.
Was there writing on the top edge of the shovel blade?
He held the flashlight right up to it. There was! Very small letters that said: Look under the mat at the ranger’s station.
Holy shit!
He assumed this meant that another clue was hidden under the mat, but he finally had something to go on! He might be able to save her!
How the hell could they have expected him to inspect the shovel for clues? That was ridiculous. If this were a contained escape room, maybe, but not when he was supposed to be searching for a shallow grave in a state park.
Anyway, it didn’t matter if the game was fair or not. He had to race all the way back to the park entrance, trying not to pass out along the way.
The surge of energy he felt from his breakthrough didn’t last very long, and Ethan staggered along the wet road, slipping frequently. He moved as fast as he could, but the stitch in his side was like a knife jabbing him in the ribs, and he could barely feel his legs.
But he could do this. He wasn’t going to let the woman die.
It felt like hours had passed before the park entrance came back into view. He lost his balance and tumbled forward onto the pavement. Pain shot through his face and he spat out some blood, though after a cursory check he didn’t think he’d actually knocked out any of his teeth. He got back up and resumed running.
When