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We haven’t talked since he covered for me at the dive shop last night. Once Frederic returned, Logan had to go straight to Frangipani to open the bar. Turns out the guests weren’t going to let something as mundane as murder stop them from partying.
When I got home last night, I sat out on the patio for a while, thinking, an activity I continued in bed for several more hours, staring up at the ceiling, the thoughts and memories crashing against one another in my head.
The more I thought, the more I spiraled. Could all this be connected? Could the killer be the same person who left that threatening note on my doorstep? Could I be next?
But one question stood out above the others: who is behind this?
I thought of Brooke’s ardent questioning, her insistence that we all clear our names. Like Greta told her, all of us were on duty during the staff meeting, which means none of us could have been behind Daniel’s murder. So who else could it be?
I compiled a mental list of the other staff members, but I’ve never seen any of them even side-eye a guest, let alone do something that would give me reason to suspect they’d murdered one.
Which leaves either the locals or the resort guests.
My thoughts landed on a memory from the other day. The first floor of the Tiki Palms, the heat heavy around me, the sharp grip of fingers around my biceps.
Ariel.
I thought of how he flipped a switch from calm to violent in a matter of seconds. That horrible premonition he shouted.
It is not safe here. You are not safe.
Maybe it wasn’t a premonition but a warning.
I recalled Tamar’s explanation.My husband, he is not well.
Ariel is sick. Sick enough to kill?
Ariel knew Lucy and Daniel from his dive class. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have an alibi for Friday night—he never admitted nor denied being at the Full Moon Party—or for the time of the staff meeting.
Ariel could be the killer. The thought hit me with a panic, an itch coursing just under my skin. I was overcome with restlessness, a need to act. But even in my frazzled state, I knew I couldn’t confront him; Frederic would fire me in an instant if I stormed a guest’s room in the middle of the night and accused him of murder.
Eventually, I came up with a plan. I would talk to them, findout whether Ariel really was sick, making sure to slide in questions that would help me determine whether he killed Lucy and Daniel.
After exhausting that train of thought, I shifted gears, my mind straying to the Full Moon Party. As hard as I tried to remember what happened—and I tried, squeezing my eyes as tightly as I could, retracing my steps after leaving Frangipani, even going so far as to google how to self-hypnotize to recover memories, which turned out to be a huge waste of time—that night remains elusive. The only clear recollection I have is of that woman’s voice, repeating that one word over and over. “No, no, no!”
I was still trying to remember when I heard Logan get home in the early-morning hours. I didn’t know what exactly to tell him, how to explain why I didn’t remember what happened that night. He saw what I was drinking. He would know I hadn’t drunk enough to black out. And then I’d have two choices: come clean about the Xanax and everything that led to it, or continue to weave more lies. Any way I looked at it, either option would end in the same result: Logan eventually leaving me.
I’ve told Logan small things about my past, breadcrumbs that carry just enough detail to hold the truth together. He knows my mother died of cancer when I was thirteen and Robin was ten. He knows about Robin and how close we were and how I lost both her and my father in an accident while I was in college. He’s always assumed that was a car accident—the same one that gave me the scar above my heart—and I’ve gone along with it.
The past is just something we’ve never felt the need to talk about extensively. I know just as little of his history, only bits and pieces of his former life that have leaked out over the years. Like how his blue-collar family back in Aberdeen had owned astruggling construction company and how it seemed like every decision he made in that town would lead to one option: spending his life working for the family company, married to a local girl he didn’t love and would eventually come to despise. How he and his brother, Alec, used to daydream about getting out and seeing the world. And finally, the real reason why Logan left Scotland: when he found Alec dead in the passenger seat of his beat-up Peugeot parked in the family garage. The car had been running all night, the garage door tightly closed.
He lost someone he loved deeply, just as I did. It was a shared bond that no one else could understand. Even if I hadn’t been entirely truthful about how that loss had happened.
I can’t keep lying to him, I know that. At some point, I’m going to slip up, and this house of cards is going to collapse, trapping me in the rubble. Tears prick at my eyes as I imagine what would happen. I’d have to move out, find somewhere else to live. If the others found out who I really am, no one on this island would want to take me in. I’d be forced to move somewhere new and start from scratch. Again. Without Logan and completely alone.
I can’t do that.
So I pretended to be asleep when Logan came in last night, impersonating the deep breathing he’s now doing next to me. And in a similar cowardly fashion, I’ll leave before he wakes up. It’s Monday, so I’m due to meet Greta for her morning yoga class, which we’ll follow up with coffee, per tradition—although this week we certainly have more pressing things than usual to talk about.
I check my phone for updates on the investigation into Daniel’s murder, but Doug hasn’t texted. So I slip out of bed as silently as I can, gather up my exercise clothes and my bag, making sure toremove one pill from the Xanax box before shoving it as far back as it will go in the drawer of my bedside table, and head out.
As I open our front door, I’m hit by the weight of the morning’s humidity, already clinging to my skin like a suffocating blanket. I try to be as quiet as possible as I lock the door behind me, but between the lack of sleep and the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, my hand trembles just enough for me to drop the key onto the doorstep.
“Shit,” I mumble under my breath.
It’s as I’m reaching for the key that I see it.
An envelope, identical to the one I received a few days ago. As with the first envelope, this one bears my name, but it doesn’t sayCass. Instead,Meghanis written in perfect typeface.
