He walked a little bit farther, halted, listened. For a moment he imagined he’d overtaken her, or worse, that she’d had a change of heart and turned back, leaving him out here on his own. He moved on again and saw something on the path ahead of him, the light picking it out even before he’d reached it—Naomi’s sneaker.

This was the place. Naomi had died here, a simple fact that still seemed full of mystery—the person who’d needed to pee, who’d nervously asked if she could join Tom’s escape party, her life snuffed out in this spot with a sudden raw violence.

The place where the undergrowth had been briefly flattened was no longer visible, the startlingly white shoe now the only reminder of what had happened here and the person who’d been taken. Yet her death was still here, it seemed, and he felt suddenly exposed, sensing that he was being watched from the darkness.

Still he stood for a second, and then heard the quietest voice, so quiet that he didn’t realize at first how close she was. “Leave me alone.”

He turned. She was standing just off the path amid the undergrowth, but almost within touching distance. He kept the flashlight low so that he could just barely see her, but the beam didn’t dazzle her.

And it was disconcerting that she’d stopped in exactly this spot. Without a light, she couldn’t have seen the sneaker on the path, couldn’t have known that this was where the attack had happened. And yet perhaps in some subconscious way she had known. Maybe the trace of it, the energy of it, was still here in the atmosphere.

“What are you doing here, Jess?”

“Tom?” Obviously unable to see him in the darkness, she sounded faintly incredulous, and he wondered who she thought might have followed.

“Yeah, it’s Tom.” She didn’t respond. “You want the jaguar to get you, is that it?”

She didn’t answer directly, but said, “I’m not coming back. It doesn’t… just doesn’t…”

He could almost hear the storm raging in her head, the crash of too many shattered thoughts, and Freddie’s absence at the heart of it all. He’d envied their intimacy, and maybe this should have been the moment his envy fell away, seeing what that closeness was doing to Jess now, but if anything, it only grew more intense, to see the truth of how much she had loved him.

And it was there in her voice as she said quite clearly, “Please leave me alone.”

“Okay.” He lowered the flashlight farther but didn’t move, his own thoughts racing now, trying to think of a way to persuade her, all the time thinking they could both be attacked at any moment. He said casually, “You might have to wait a few days though.”

“What?”