The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover design by Rebecca Lown Design
Cover art by Arcangel Images
Cover copyright © 2021 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
mulhollandbooks.com
twitter.com/mulhollandbooks
facebook.com/mulhollandbooks
First ebook edition: March 2021
Mulholland Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Mulholland Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
ISBN 978-0-316-70359-8
LCCN 2020946792
E3-20210212-DA-NF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Blindfolded
Chapter 2: See You Again Tomorrow
Chapter 3: Drop Point
Chapter 4: Reflections on the Lake
Chapter 5: Breathe
Chapter 6: From There to Here
Chapter 7: Lady of the Flies
Chapter 8: Accounting
Chapter 9: Red Deer
Chapter 10: File Folders
Chapter 11: Inland Beach
Chapter 12: Password
Chapter 13: Ghoul Camp
Chapter 14: Spooked
Chapter 15: Midnight Raid
Chapter 16: Blood
Chapter 17: Wild Things
Chapter 18: Here and Gone
Chapter 19: Pack of Wolves
Chapter 20: Perfectly Reasonable Explanations
Chapter 21: Little Red
Chapter 22: Culture Clash
Chapter 23: The Thud
Chapter 24: Caller
Chapter 25: Off Course
Chapter 26: Letting Jezebel Loose
Chapter 27: Confessions
Chapter 28: Search Party
Chapter 29: The Box
Chapter 30: Puzzle Pieces
Chapter 31: Take Chase
Chapter 32: Memory
Chapter 33: Hiding
Chapter 34: Arrival
Chapter 35: Aftermath
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Nina Siegal
To my daughter, Sonia,
and all the girls who are finding their way
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
—Henry David Thoreau
Chapter 1Blindfolded
They handed her a blindfold. She looked at it, turning it over in her hands. It was black, made of a thick fabric, with extra flaps on the sides to make sure no light seeped in at the edges of her vision. It reminded Karin of the blindfolds her mother would wear when they took an international overnight flight from the US back to the Netherlands. She knew that this object would handicap her, taking away her favorite sense, one she relied on pretty heavily. She paused, for just a moment. “Put it on, all of you,” he said, with a harsh urgency that startled her. Goodbye, sight.
Karin lifted it to her face, pulled the straps over her crown, and instinctively closed her eyes. When she opened them, she tried to see what she could see. It wasn’t exactly nothing. There were tiny specks of light, some of them white, some yellowish blue. A little bit of light shining in, like particles of dust. That was it. Had she thought that she’d see shadows or shapes beyond the fabric? Maybe. But no, it was dark enough that she was, essentially, blinded.
After that they all were led by their shoulders to the car, told to step up, to lean forward, to sit back. Confusing instructions when you’re still trying to make sense of the blindness. The hands that moved her were rough, not gentle. Hers seemed to be a man’s, and he seemed to be in a rush. The hands reached over her body and she could feel his hot breath on her face, hear a little grunting as he pressed her seat belt into its buckle with a resounding click. Then he announced to all of them, “Absolutely no talking,” and the doors were slammed shut, clunk, clunk, clunk.
She knew that she was in the back seat of a car, not the front, because she could feel the door at her left elbow. What else could she figure out, with her current handicap? She tried to think of it as a game, a sensory experiment, to calm her nerves. And realized that the strongest sensation she had at the moment was the vibration of her own body. Her heart was pounding. She raised a hand to her chest and then put her other hand on top of the first, astonished at the luxury of that other powerful sense: touch.
Had she known that she’d be this terrified? What was making her so scared? Knowing that they’d all be dropped out in the woods, forced to find their way to their campsite without GPS, in darkness? Or was it—and of course it more likely was—the fact that they were heading to the place where she’d last seen her father alive, a place that had so many positive memories of being with him, but also that would remind her, in so many little ways, of his death? It had been her choice to join the Scouts in Ede, so her dropping would be in the Hoge Veluwe Park. All the other options in the country had seemed too small and too tame—the Veluwe was a real national park where it would actually feel like going on safari, a place where you could actually get lost.
Her mom had asked her about a million times if this was really a good idea, but Karin had just insisted. She knew it so well, she had told her mom, and she needed to feel comfortable there,
