He pulls a duvet around himself and sits cross-legged on the bed.

“The Icebreaker?” I say.

“Nothing to do with me.” He must see my skepticism because he’s quick to add, “I mean it. I don’t have a clue where it came from. My plan for getting answers was nowhere near as devious.”

“Did you take our phones?”

“No. I sent the invites and paid for our accommodation but that’s all, I swear.”

My knee hurts. I perch at the far end of the bunk. “Why bring us all the way out here?”

“See, I thought about doing it in the UK, some bar in London or something, but with the way things ended up, I didn’t know how keen everyone would be to see each other. I figured if I invited you all here, you wouldn’t be able to resist.”

“Wouldn’t be able to leave, more like.”

“That wasn’t meant to happen. I mean, I knew we’d be the only guests up here, but I thought there’d be staff around.”

“Why did you pretend the invites were from me?”

“I’d emailed Brent a couple of times, years back, but he never replied. I was in a bit of a state because of Mum. And yeah, I knew it wasn’t right but I was desperate. I thought if it appeared to be from you, Brent might come. And there was no way Dale would have come if he thought it was from me. Anyway, Heather still said no.”

“So you blackmailed her. Be there or I will tell.”

He looks away. “Yeah.”

“How did you know about Brent and Heather?”

“I heard them. I was in bed having a power nap before Glow Bar. Wasn’t hard to recognize Heather’s voice.”

“So here we are.” I need to push aside my hurt and focus on puzzling this out. “Who did you speak to at the resort?”

“Some guy called Romain, because the director was away. I wasn’t sure if they’d let us up here this time of year—the weather’s pretty unpredictable—but I phoned up and explained what I wanted and they got back to me with a quote.”

“Did you meet with anyone in person?”

“No, I did it all by phone and email. The resort office was all closed up when I walked past yesterday, but Romain warned me it would be. Said everything would be set up and ready for us. The minute we climbed out of the bubble and nobody was here, I sensed something was wrong.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?”

Curtis looks sheepish. “It would have defeated the whole purpose of bringing you here. I thought I’d play along with it until I figured out what was going on. Anyway, the Icebreaker sort of worked in my favor.”

“So how do you explain everything that’s happened since yesterday?”