Collateral

"Secrets have a shelf life. Eventually someone starts asking the right questions, and then it all comes pouring out—usually at the worst possible moment."

Uncle Jamie wasn't letting it go.

"Well? You still haven't answered my question."

His voice seethed with anger, each word landing like a slap. I'd never heard him sound like this — not even close. The Uncle Jamie I knew told bad jokes at Christmas dinner and snuck the dogs treats when he thought no one was watching. This Uncle Jamie looked like he wanted to tear Luke apart with his bare hands.

Luke took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling. When he spoke, his voice had steadied, but there was something underneath it now. Something that sounded almost like defeat.

"Joel was the driver that delivered the tents back home."

The words hit the tent like a grenade going off. I heard Glenda's sharp intake of breath, felt my own chest tighten with shock. The delivery driver. This dead kid on the mattress — throat cut, blood drained, somehow still breathing — had been a bloody delivery driver. Just some bloke doing his job, dropping off camping gear, and now he was lying here in another dimension with his neck sliced open.

Wrong place, wrong time. Story of everyone's life in this hellhole, apparently.

Glenda leaned closer to the body, her fingers finding a small rip in Joel's polo shirt. She worked at the fabric for a moment, her brow furrowed in concentration, slowly revealing something stitched into the material. A name, embroidered in neat letters.

"Joel," she read aloud, her voice barely above a whisper.

So that was real, at least. Not just a guess or an assumption. The kid had his name sewn into his work shirt like a schoolboy, and now that name was all any of us knew about him.

Luke pressed on, the words coming faster now, tumbling out like he couldn't hold them back anymore. "Henri and Duke's coming here was all an accident. Joel accidentally let Henri outside and he ran through the Portal when we tried to catch him. I forgot I was still carrying Duke when I followed after Henri."

I blinked, trying to piece together what he was saying. The dogs had come through by accident. Henri had bolted, Luke had chased him, Duke had been along for the ride. And Joel — this poor bastard who'd just been delivering tents — had seen the whole thing.

Had seen the portal.

Had seen Luke and the dogs vanish into thin air.

"And Joel saw all this?" Glenda asked, her voice careful. Cautious. Like she was handling something fragile.

Luke nodded, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped to barely a whisper. The guilt in it was thick enough to choke on.

"Yes. And when I returned I found him lying in a pool of blood in the back of the truck."

The tent went silent.

I stood there, my brain struggling to catch up, to slot this new information into what I already knew. Luke had come back through the portal and found Joel bleeding out. Found him dying — or already dead — in the back of his own delivery truck. And instead of calling an ambulance, instead of doing any of the normal things a normal person would do, Luke had... what? Brought the body here? Dumped it in the river?

What the actual fuck.

Uncle Jamie's voice rose, anger seeping through every syllable. "But that was yesterday! Why didn't you tell me?"

Yesterday. The word landed like a boot to the chest. This had happened yesterday, and Luke had said nothing.

Luke swallowed hard, his throat working visibly. His eyes were fixed on the ground, refusing to meet anyone's gaze.

"I thought... I thought you would blame me for it."

The admission hung in the air, small and pathetic. I almost felt sorry for him for half a second — the way his voice cracked, the way his whole body seemed to shrink — but then I remembered that I was standing in another dimension because this arsehole had pushed me through a magic doorway, and whatever sympathy I might have felt evaporated like spit on a hot engine.

Uncle Jamie clearly felt the same way.

"I do fucking blame you for it!"

The words exploded out of him, his face contorting with rage. I'd seen blokes lose their temper on job sites before — foremen screaming at apprentices, subcontractors going at each other over disputed invoices — but this was different. This was personal. This was the kind of anger that came from somewhere deep, somewhere wounded, somewhere that wouldn't heal easily.

"Boys!" Glenda's voice cut through the chaos, sharp and commanding. "Enough!"

But Uncle Jamie wasn't finished. The fury had him now, had broken through whatever restraint he'd been clinging to, and the accusations kept coming.

"And then you brought him here and dumped his body in the fucking river! That's some seriously fucked up shit!"

My stomach lurched. I could picture it — Luke dragging Joel's body through the portal, hauling it across the dunes, rolling it into that crystal-clear water like he was disposing of rubbish. The image made my skin crawl, made me want to step further away from the man I'd been standing next to like he might be contagious.

"It wasn't me!" Luke's voice cracked with desperation, his hands coming up in a gesture that was half surrender, half plea. "I would never do something so terrible!"

"Stop it!" Glenda yelled, and this time her voice carried real authority — the kind of tone that demanded obedience, that cut through bullshit and got people's attention.

The tent fell silent.

We stood there in the aftermath, the four of us arranged around Joel's body like mourners at the world's most fucked-up funeral. The tension was thick enough to taste, a physical presence that made the air feel heavy and hard to breathe. Outside, I could hear the soft hiss of wind across the dunes — but in here, nothing moved.

Uncle Jamie broke the silence first, his voice heavy with anger and accusation.

"Well, what did you do with the body?"

Luke's response came quietly, stripped of everything except resignation.

"We buried him."

"We?" Glenda's eyebrow lifted, the single word carrying a world of implication.

Luke hesitated, his eyes darting around the tent like he was looking for an escape route. Then, reluctantly: "Beatrix, Gladys and I."

More names. More players in whatever twisted drama Luke had been orchestrating. Beatrix and Gladys — how the hell are they involved in all of this? How many people had Luke dragged into this mess? How deep did this whole thing go?

The pain in my stomach intensified, a sharp cramping that bent me forward at the waist. My head was pounding, my vision blurring at the edges, and the walls of the tent seemed to be closing in around me, shrinking the space until I couldn't breathe.

"This is insane!"

The words tore out of me before I could stop them, raw and ragged and desperate. I meant it as a statement, an observation, a protest against the sheer fucking madness of everything that had happened since Luke had opened that sliding door in his living room. But it came out sounding more like a cry for help, the kind of noise a wounded animal makes when it doesn't know what else to do.

Nobody responded. The conversation continued around me like I hadn't spoken — or maybe like what I'd said was so obvious it didn't need acknowledging. The world spun, my head throbbing, and I knew with sudden certainty that I needed to get out of this tent before I did something embarrassing.

I stumbled toward the entrance, my legs unsteady beneath me, my vision swimming. The tent flap brushed against my face as I pushed through it, canvas rough against my skin, and then I was outside — bright light, warm air, the endless expanse of dust and sand stretching away in every direction.

My legs gave out before I'd made it three steps.

I hit the ground hard, my knees sinking into the soft dust, my hands following a second later. The impact jarred through my wrists and up into my shoulders, but I barely felt it. My stomach was clenching, heaving, and then I was vomiting — not much, just bile and water, but my body kept trying anyway, kept convulsing like it was determined to turn me inside out.

When it finally stopped, I stayed where I was, on my hands and knees in the dust, my head hanging between my shoulders. Sweat dripped down my face, mixing with the tears I hadn't realised were falling. My whole body shook, tremors running through me like aftershocks.

The tent flap rustled behind me. Someone leaving, footsteps crunching in the sand.

"Luke! Wait!"

Paul's voice, distant and desperate. More footsteps, fading away.

I didn't look up. Couldn't summon the energy to care who was going where or why. I just knelt there in the dirt, my hands clutching my stomach, trying to hold myself together while everything fell apart around me.

After a while — could have been a minute, could have been ten — I became aware of a presence beside me. Small, warm, familiar. Duke had followed me out, his little body pressing against my leg, his cold nose nudging my hand.

I pushed him away gently. Not because I didn't want the comfort, but because I couldn't bear it. Couldn't accept kindness right now, not when I felt this broken, this hollowed out.

"Duke," I murmured, my voice wrecked and hoarse. "Go on. Back to the tent."

He licked my palm once — a quick, wet gesture of loyalty — and then trotted back toward the canvas entrance, his tail drooping slightly. I watched him go, a small shape disappearing through the flap, and felt something in my chest crack a little further.

But as he vanished inside, a thought surfaced through the fog of misery.

Duke was here. Duke had found me, had followed me, had been right there when I needed something familiar to hold onto.

But where was Henri?

I tried to remember if I'd seen him at all since arriving in this place. Henri's bark had been what started this whole mess — the sound that had made Luke run, that had drawn everyone to the river. But had I actually seen him? Had he been at the lagoon, at the camp, anywhere?

I couldn't picture it. Couldn't recall a single glimpse of his white and tan fur, his particular way of moving, anything that would confirm he was here and safe.

Curiosity stirred beneath the exhaustion, a tiny spark of purpose in the darkness. I needed to know. Needed to find Henri, to make sure both dogs were accounted for, to have at least one small thing I could fix in a world where everything else was broken beyond repair.

Slowly, painfully, I wiped the dust and tears from my face. Scooped handfuls of the fine sand over the evidence of my sickness, burying it until nothing showed. A small, stupid act of pride — hiding my weakness from no one, since there was no one around to see.

Then I pushed myself to my feet, swaying slightly, and turned toward the tent.

One foot in front of the other. That was all I could manage right now.

One foot in front of the other, and maybe — eventually — I'd find my way through this.