A look passes between Brent and Heather. A wrinkling of Brent’s brow that says: What are you playing at? Brent thinks Heather wrote it! Heather answers with a slight shake of her head. What does that mean? Not now? Or that she didn’t write it?

My brain is boggling. If Brent thinks Heather wrote one of them, does that mean he actually slept with her?

I crane my neck to see the handwriting, not that I would recognize it—we didn’t do a lot of writing that winter—but the card Heather holds is written in neat capitals, the way you write when you don’t want someone to recognize your penmanship. It’s a joke, it must be. A prearranged joke between Curtis and Brent to stir things up. Curtis and Dale always had a problem with each other. Yet Brent’s surprise seemed genuine.

I could speak up, insisting I didn’t write either of them, but I think I’ll wait and see what the next one says.

Heather opens the third envelope. She looks at the card and sucks in her breath. “I slept with Saskia.”

Nobody laughs this time. A line has just been crossed.

Despite our differences, I can’t imagine why anyone here would write that. As far as I know, only one person present has slept with Saskia, and I didn’t think it was common knowledge. I’m careful not to look in Brent’s direction—or Curtis’s.

Heather eyes her husband, clearly wondering if he wrote it. If I stick to my assumption that Curtis and Brent wrote the first two, Dale must have written this one. But why the hell would he do that?

Heather opens the next one. Must be thinking it can’t get any worse.

But apparently it is, because she blinks and looks up in shock. “I know where Saskia is.”

Curtis snatches the card from her hand and studies it, stony-faced. “Is this some sort of joke?”

Nobody answers.

“Did anyone actually write any of these?”

Eyes slide around the room. Heads shake.

Unease creeps through me. A glance at the window, at the total and utter blackness out there, reminds me how alone we are. It’s just the five of us. Nobody else for miles and miles. I need to know if Curtis invited us here. Because if he didn’t . . .

I look at the door, thinking of all the long, dark corridors beyond. Is someone out there?

Brent breaks the silence. “Let’s hear the last one.”

Heather opens it and turns pale. The card flutters from her fingers to the floor.

I pick it up. “I killed Saskia.”

CHAPTER 4

TEN YEARS AGO

A girl flies high above the half-pipe, white-blond hair streaming out from below her helmet. She’s good. On her last hit, she spins one and a half rotations—540 degrees—and brakes to a stop in front of me, spraying me with snow.