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They had taken off their shoes to let them dry, so she went down to the yard and walked straight in at the water’s edge. The waves were shockingly cold when she waded into the current. The dock was to her right, and she stopped to orient herself to where she’d seen the bright color.
“I see it.” Jon’s head submerged, and his bare feet kicked up as he dove down. She barely breathed as she waited for him to surface.
A gull landed on the dock and then another. And another.
His head broke the surface of the water, and he gasped. “It’s a woman. Get me a rope. There’s one in the shed. Can’t tell much yet, but you’d better call Mason.”
“He won’t want you to disturb the site. Come on out, and I’ll call him.” She hurried back to the kitchen to grab her phone.
A woman. Ella Anderson or someone else? She grabbed her phone and called Mason. She went back outside as it rang through.
“Annie?” Mason’s voice held impatience, and she thought he might have been hoping for a day off too.
“Mason, we found a body off the dock at the Dunstan cabin. A woman.”
“On my way. Don’t touch anything.”
The call ended. Like she’d touch it before he got there. Not when it was clear the poor woman was already gone. She dropped into a chair on the back deck to let the sun warm up her cold skin. They’d draped their towels from earlier across the chairs, and she held out one for Jon.
He shook the water from his hair and clothing and came toward her. He toweled off. “Mason on his way?”
“Yes. He’ll bring a forensic team, so we need to stay away to prevent contaminating it any more.” Her gaze lingered on the dinner table they’d left out. “We probably obscured some evidence already.”
He squatted in front of her. “Not the way I hoped our day would go. I mean, you said yes, but I hate that we’ll always remember this day attached to something so awful.”
She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. “I love the way you care for other people. We’ll never forget that proposal.”
“When all the hoopla dies down, we need to talk about when and where.”
“We will,” she promised. “We will.”
***
Sarah hugged herself in the darkness of a thick grove of pines. The thin light of the moon did little to illuminate where she stood. She had taken the dog out to do his business, and the blackness of the night creeped her out. The heavy scent of pine added to her distress in some way she couldn’t identify. Had there been the smell of pine trees when she was taken? Maybe coming to this island had been a mistake.
A branch snapped, and a man’s voice floated through the trees. “The boss will be mad.”
The gruff voice brought Sarah’s head up. She couldn’t see the man and didn’t recognize the voice, but something about it lifted the hair on the back of her neck.
She sidled that way and peered through the spruce needles into a small clearing that let in the moonlight. The two men standing there were unfamiliar to her. The closest one wore a plaid shirt that stretched across his shoulders. A glint in the other one’s hand appeared to be a gun.
“You think I care what that old gasbag has to say?” The gunman snarled. “And anyway, he’s gone. He’ll never know.”
“She’s protected.”
“Says who? No one will know if we have a little fun.”
“She’ll tell.”
“Not if she’s never found. We can take a dinghy out and scuttle it. Everyone will think she and the pooch drowned. Come on, those fireworks got me fired up.”
Sarah stifled a gasp and took a step back.She and the pooch. Were they talking abouther?
“If you don’t want to join in the fun, I’ll go without you.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought of everything. I’m in. The boss won’t be back until tomorrow. We have the run of the place.”
Where could she hide? And what about Scout? He was likely to give her away with a whine or a bark, but the thought of leaving him to the mercy of those men felt wrong. They might shoot him.
