“A run, in this heat?”
“Her thing after a night out. We normally get images of ‘broken Jo’ at every mile in her stories, complaining about running with a hangover.” He looks down at his phone. “Saying that, none so far today. Perhaps she’s feeling the booze—”
“She must have gone pretty early,” Maya murmurs. “I’ve been up since six.”
“Probably.” He shrugs. “But I thought she’d be back by now. Breakfast’s calling.”
Maya stands. “I need a shower, but I can be ready in fifteen if you all want to go?”
Seth nods. “I’ll knock for Caleb and then message Jo, let her know we’ve gone up.”
As everyone drifts from the room, Hana’s left alone with her coffee. She’s about to take it outside when she notices Maya’s sketchbook on the chair. Curiosity getting the better of her, Hana wanders over. Putting her coffee down on the table, she nudges open the book, flicking through, one eye on the corridor. Sketches of the rock face, each one slightly smaller than the last. A Russian doll of an image.
She keeps flicking, but the rest of the pages are blank. About to close it, she hesitates, catching a glimpse of a sketch toward the back. A drawing of Jo.
Hana’s skin prickles. Although Maya has drawn Jo accurately—slightly crooked nose, full mouth, the slight dimple to her chin—she realizes that it’s how Maya’s drawn her that’s odd. Each line is leaden, as if she’s pressed the pencil so hard that it’s nearly gone through the page.
The effect is curious: it’s as if she’s captured Jo but at the same time is trying to overpower her with her pencil, battling her image into submission with each mark and line.
17
Sorry, I didn’t know Michael was going to be so full-on,” Farrah says as they follow Justin along the main path.
“It happens. People often need to vent after something like this, a way of coping with what they’ve seen.” Elin keeps her tone light, but she’s still chilled as she picks over his words. “What did you make of what he said, about someone wandering around?”
Farrah shakes her head. “Made no sense. You can’t get up there, not anymore . . .” She trails off as Justin stops at the entrance to the main lodge and the glass doors slide open automatically.
Inside, it’s another world. The reception space is beautiful—wide and open, with pale wooden floors. There’s a glass ceiling and, on the left, a glass wall, flooding the room with light.
Whitewashed walls on the right are pulled into sharp relief by floor-to-ceiling panels in the same chalky pink as the exterior. The panels roughly divide the space into two zones: a seating area with a view of the rock through the glass wall and ceiling, and the reception on the opposite side. A row of tall cacti stud the back wall.
Elin’s eyes lock on the huge textile artwork hanging on the wall behind the reception desk. It’s abstract, swirls of line and color interspersed with smaller, almost primitive markings.
It’s only when she gets closer that she realizes what the markings are.
Her pulse picks up. Not abstract shapes at all, but reapers.
Small versions of the rock, dotted throughout the textile.
Elin looks on, discomforted, as she sees more and more—some woven into the fabric in the same color as the background, camouflaged.
Farrah follows her gaze. “Beautiful, isn’t it? A contemporary British textile artist who went to the school here back in the day. It’s something else, seeing it here.” She glances over at the glass wall. “Under the rock itself.”
It’s only then that Elin properly absorbs the mass of stone above, looming through the glass ceiling and the transparent wall. She balks. The sheer scale of it from this angle is overwhelming; one more yard and it would be invading the building.
“Elin? You okay? Justin’s ready if you are.”
“I’m fine.” She has to force a smile as they walk down the corridor leading off the lobby.
Justin guides them into the room at the end. “I’ve got it ready.”
Elin briefly glances around. Multiple screens cover the back wall, all showing different images of the retreat. The room is thrumming with a familiar office odor: coffee mixed with a plasticky tech smell.
Expertly minimizing one screen, Justin brings up another. “The camera is positioned in front of the lodge looking out to the pavilion. Sweeps from left to right.” His fingers move rapidly over the keyboard. “This is the live scene.”