Adrenaline flushes the pins and needles out of my feet and launches me toward my friends. The next few seconds are critical—I don’t waste any time gawping at Miss Manners or even asking my friends if they’re all right. I know in my heart that we’re dead. The danger at Nightlight is no longer some nameless, opaque anxiety; it’s an unhinged woman who’s caught us with proof that she’s a murderer.

Hiding in the jungle is our only option.

“Run away,” I gasp. Marcos clutches my hand willingly, rolling first to his knees, then his feet. Despite her head start, Molly hasn’t made much progress scrambling across the dirt. Marcos and I hook our arms underneath hers to hoist her up, but she squeals in protest until a loud click stops us. The metallic click echoes through the forest, stopping my heart.

We all heard it—the cocking of a gun.

“Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt,” Miss Manners orders from her bird’s nest perch. “Stand where you are and face me.” The three of us do as we’re told as obediently as programmed robots. In a way, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude; I expected a shot to ring out and to watch the back of Molly’s head explode—or for Molly to watch it happen to me. Click, bang, darkness. That’s how fast it would happen. No time for last words or even a final, reflective thought. It would be chaos, then nothing forever.

A single-action rifle points downward, but it’s impossible to tell which of us Miss Manners has in her sights. She could take out anyone in a heartbeat; the watchtower is the perfect vantage point for a sniper. Exhausted with worry, Molly raises her arms, and Marcos and I follow.

“It was her,” I whisper. “She wasn’t with us at lunch.”

The Reverend had an alibi for not murdering Drew: he was at lunch with Briggs, Karaoke Bill, and the gray-shirts. I was so distracted by Bill’s Walkman and plotting our next moves, I failed to notice that Miss Manners skipped lunch entirely. While I ate peppered fish, she crouched inside the bird’s nest with Drew’s body and waited for the right moment to turn on the music, scream for Briggs, and shove the model overboard. And Briggs was too consumed by freeing Drew from the rope to notice somebody hiding underneath the tarp.