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The thought sends a shiver up my skin. Logan pulls me intohis side, and we watch as the men lug Lucy’s remains toward the run-down ambulance parked along the sand.
I don’t remember going back into the dive shop, but somehow I do. Everyone is there: Logan, Greta, Doug, Neil, Brooke, and someone else I don’t recognize. A skinny, mustached man in an ill-fitting white shirt. When he talks, it’s in stilted English, the thickness of his Thai accent making his words nearly incomprehensible. A drop of sweat inches down the scraggly hairs on his upper lip, and I find myself transfixed, unable to look away.
“We take body back to office for now. Office have a…” he trails off, looking to Doug to help him, murmuring a word in Thai.
“Morgue,” Doug prompts.
“Morge.” The man’s imitation lacks the hard G sound. “We take girl there. We run tests to know why she die. We come back tomorrow to ask questions once we get results,” he says without urgency.
When it’s apparent that the man has no further information to provide, Doug leads him out of the shop, closing the door tightly behind him.
I feel the warmth of Logan’s body next to me, his arm close to mine. I shift slightly, not enough to be noticeable but enough to get some distance. On my other side sits Brooke, her fingers entwined with mine. She was quick to grab my hand as soon as I reentered the shop, and despite all the horror surrounding us, I feel a warmth between our palms.
Several moments pass before anyone speaks.
“Wait,” Brooke says as if she truly doesn’t understand. “Thepolice aren’t going to question anyone before they go? Not even Cass?”
She looks over at me, a sympathetic expression on her face, and I divert my eyes. I feel the muscles in Logan’s arm tense.
Only Doug shakes his head before clearing his throat, apparently putting a definitive end to Brooke’s inquiry. He looks to the others.
“We should figure out how to handle this.” He pauses, apparently waiting for someone to agree with him, but no one does. He checks his watch. “Until Frederic arrives, we need to keep this as low-key as possible.”
“But all those crowds,” Greta says, her eyes bloodshot. “Everyone knowssomethinghas happened. Shouldn’t we make some type of announcement?”
“Frederic said to wait,” Doug says, shrugging. “I guess if anyone asks, we just tell them there’s been an accident.”
“An accident. Just like the woman.”
It takes me a moment to realize that the voice belongs to Brooke. Her words are laced with a hardness I’ve never heard from her. In an instant, she drops my hand from her grasp and stands, crossing the room. A sudden coldness enters through my skin, and I can’t tell if it comes from her disengaging fingers or from the words she speaks.
“Just like the other woman.”
I know who she’s referring to, of course. The woman who fell from Khrum Yai a few days before Brooke arrived on Koh Sang. Brooke kept asking about her during our hike the other day. She wanted to know what the woman was like, whether I thought she killed herself, whether it was feasible that someone would strayso far off the hiking path that they could fall. Her questions conjured images of Jacinta. Her chestnut curls, her big brown eyes, the attention she seemed to command when she walked into a room, just like Brooke. They were more similar than Brooke could ever realize.
I didn’t know how to answer Brooke’s questions, so I didn’t. I claimed I didn’t know Jacinta, that I’d never met her. I hated lying to Brooke, of course, but it was easier than telling her the truth. Than getting tripped up by the follow-up questions she would inevitably have.
From the corner of my eye, I see Logan’s head dart upward, his eyes fixing on Brooke leaning against the desk.
“Yes, an accident,” he says coldly. “You come to an island with strong currents and rocky cliffs, and you combine that with wee kids who don’t know how to hold their booze traveling alone for the first time in their lives, and that’s what you get. Accidents.”
My stomach muscles clench as I feel Logan’s frustration bubbling inside him. He doesn’t need to explain it. All the Permanents understand what will happen if the police determine Lucy’s death wasn’t an accident. The salacious headlines, the canceled bookings, the lost profits. The resort can’t afford that. And neither can we.
“It just seems like quite the coincidence…” Brooke trails off, but I can hear the irritation in her voice. Brooke’s never been one to shy away from expressing her opinion. It was something that drew me to her in the first place, the confidence with which she seemed to say whatever she thought, with no care as to whether people disagreed with her. But this is different. There’s a new anger that edges beneath her words.
“I—I saw something,” I say, eager to end this growingconfrontation. My words are so quiet that I’m not sure anyone has heard them until Greta turns to me.
“What did you see?”
My mind flashes to the metallic object glinting on the seabed. The feel of it, light but solid in my hand. I shake it off.
“She was hurt.” I feel everyone’s eyes on me, prompting me to continue. “She had a cut on her forehead,” I say quickly, the attention sending warmth to my cheeks. “And it looked like bruises on her neck.”
Neil has been leaning against the shop desk, but upon hearing that, he shifts upright. “What did they look like, the bruises?”
“I don’t know for sure, but they were small lines on each side of her neck. Like…like…” I falter.
“Like handprints?” Brooke asks.
