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“No,” I said, bewildered.
He let go abruptly and took a half step back. I just stared at him. I wasn’t afraid, and there would be a price for that later, but for now I needed the calm. The empty. I did know him, though—didn’t I? It was like I remembered him from a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. “What were you looking at?” he asked, brusque and demanding.
“I saw—” I twisted back toward the water. The man was gone. In his place was a tree that must have been uprooted on some othershore and dragged here by the tides, blackened by the water and pitching as the waves rolled it. Out in the distance, Mr. Nguyen’s boat continued its steady retreat. Not vanished at all. The tree—I’d seen the tree, and somehow I’d thought it was a man.
The explanation leapt into my mind, comfortable and reassuring and false. I swallowed. No. I knew what I’d seen.
“Hey,” someone called.
The speaker was a young man—I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t expected to find anyone my age here, but he was eighteen or nineteen at the most, with black, tousled hair and a lip ring. His skin was light brown, his frame borderline scrawny; he wore a T-shirt printed with a caffeine molecule over a long-sleeved shirt. He loped up the road and slowed as he approached, the slight laboring of his breath suggesting he’d run a fair distance. When he spoke, it was with a British accent. I didn’t know enough to tell what kind, but it made him sound a lot more refined than he looked in this state.
“Everything okay here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the ocean. If I said anything about a man in the water, they’d think I was delusional.
“You’re all right?” the boy pressed, looking between me and the big man, who still stood closer to me than I liked. “I heard a shout.”
“I’m fine.” True enough, with my fear neatly excised. But that glassy calm made people nervous, and the young man’s eyes were uncertain as he looked me up and down. I forced myself not to glance over my shoulder. Not to wonder if someone was behind me. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
The big man’s eyes tracked out past me, at the driftwood tree,and he gave me a narrow look. “You two, you should get inside. The mist is coming. It’s very dangerous.”
“Yeah, we’ll do that,” the boy said. The big man muttered something under his breath and walked past us, heading down the road. The boy waited for him to get a good distance away before he turned to me. “You’re the intern, then. Sophia Hayes.”
Sophia Hayes. I’m Sophia Hayes. I’d practiced it in front of a mirror until it felt natural. One of many lies I’d have to tell. “Yeah,” I said. Empty of fear, I could tilt my lips in a faint smile. “How’d you guess?”
“It’s not exactly a huge deductive leap,” he said, smiling back. It made his lip ring click against his teeth. “I’m Liam. Liam Kapoor. My mother’s your evil overlord.” Liam stepped forward with his hand outstretched and I took it. His skin was cool, his palm lightly callused. The motion pulled his sleeve up at his wrist, baring the edge of a bandage taped down over the back of his arm.
“You mean Dr. Kapoor?” I asked. She was one of the two senior staff members who ran the LARC, and the one who’d hired me.
“That’s the one. I’m spending the summer out here with her as punishment for a few minor transgressions.”
“Poor you,” I said. I wondered if those transgressions had anything to do with the bandage. “That guy...”
“Mikhail? He’s the caretaker. Or groundskeeper. Or something,” Liam said. “Wanders around the island with a shovel, glaring at people. He’s not what I’d call friendly, but I’ve never seen him accost anyone like that.”
“I think he just—wasn’t sure who I was,” I suggested.
“There’s a way of saying hello without coming off like a totalcreeper, and that wasn’t it,” Liam said, eyeing me with an uncertain look. Like he was wondering if he needed to be more forceful, more comforting, or something else entirely. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m totally sure. Completely sure. Absolutely—”
“Got it,” he said with a laugh. I crafted a smile, false and crooked.
“Although I am exhausted,” I confessed. It wasn’t a lie—I’d been traveling for more than thirty-six hours, crammed on planes, jostled on buses, and pitched around in Mr. Nguyen’s little boat. “Dr. Kapoor’s instructions said to head down the road until I reached Mrs. Popova’s house.”
“You’re on the right track. Dr. Kapoor’s place is right up there.” He pointed in the direction he had come from. “I was out for a walk when I heard you. Mikhail’s place is by the water nearer the LARC, and Mrs. Popova’s is straight that way, at the eastern end of the island. Come on, I’ll walk you there.”
I nodded. I didn’t look at the water, at the tree, at Mr. Nguyen retreating. I kept my eyes fixed on the gravel road, and on the sky ahead, where a dozen birds wheeled and cried.
I’d done my research before I came here. I knew my mother wasn’t the first to disappear from Bitter Rock. There was theKrachka. Landontown. And, in 1943, there was a tiny army outpost. Thirteen men, an airstrip, and a few planes.
Like my mother, they had come to Bitter Rock.
Like my mother, they had vanished.
I kept my eyes on the road, and I wondered—what if they weren’t gone at all?
EXHIBIT B
