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“Mystery writer?” Kit says.
I nod.
Kit turns to Madison. “Kid who is probably smarter than all of us combined?”
Madison rolls her eyes but agrees. Sadie was in this bedroom tonight. She was settling in for sleep after arguing with both me and Kit. Already on edge, she finds the bloodied hair, presumes one of us is being schoolgirl nasty, decides she’s had enough, and takes the boat to shore.
There’s no evidence anyone hurt her. No evidence she was kidnapped from the house—that single entry on the log means no one came in and then took her out. Her belongings are gone. She’s gone. The boat’s gone. There’s only one solution to that equation.
“She’ll send a boat for us tomorrow,” Kit says. “This was a lousy thing to do, but she didn’t mean to scare us. She only wanted off the island.”
“Whatever her story, she can cry it on your shoulder,” Jayla says. “I’m not interested.”
“I didn’t say it was okay,” Kit says, meeting his sister’s gaze. “Yes, I don’t have your history with her, so I cut her more slack. But I won’t forget this.”
I cut in before Garrett can comment, “We’ve established that Sadie left on her own, meaning we just need to wait for morning…” I trail off, as a realization hits.
“I don’t know about you guys,” Garrett says, “but I need a drink. Something harder than beer.”
I shake my head. “There’s still someone out there. On the island.”
“Uh, no, Laney,” he says. “We just decided that, remember? Someone is trying to spook you with fake staging, and I still don’t understand why they’d want this place, but apparently, that’s why Kit is the Fortune 500 guy and I’m the cop with a mortgage. Point is, no one killed your cleaning kid. We’re fine.”
“Was the light off when you went to take a piss?” Madison says.
“What?”
“You went around that side of the house when you had to pee. Was the light on?”
“I guess so.”
“You’d know if it wasn’t,” Madison says. “It was cloudy and there’s no light pollution out here. You wouldn’t have gone far in the dark, so the lightwason. Now it’s broken, and there was a hand coming out of the ground that you would have seen. That means someone’s out there.”
He hesitates. His eyes glint. “The bastard who scared the shit out of us tonight?” He smiles. “Guess we need to form a little search party, bring that asshole in.”
NINE
We complete our interior search and double-check that all windows and doors are locked. Then I set the alarm, and we go outside, armed with flashlights and makeshift weapons—a kitchen knife, a hammer, a baseball bat. I don’t like the fact that the gun is missing. Okay, that’s an understatement. I’m trying very hard not to jump to some scary conclusions about that. The simplest answer is that I got distracted on my last visit and left it out back after target practice and a guest tucked it into their luggage like a nice hotel towel.
We split up again. Garrett goes off on his own, and no one argues with that. Kit takes Madison, and I’m with Jayla. Before we go out, she insists I pause to clean my foot and put on shoes. I grumble, but I do it. The glass only left a small puncture, easily handled by a quick wash and a bandage. Then we head out.
The island is big enough for someone to hide on but small enough to conduct a decent search. Our section is the gazebo portion—the rocky cliff and patches of meadow that surround it. I asked Kit and Madison to take the beach, because it’s the least likely spot for anyone to hide. Garrett chose the woods, clearly thinking that’s the most likely place. I picked the gazebo region because I’m now certain I didn’t mistake that tree trunk for a figure.
Someone was on that cliff. They saw us coming. Whoever is staging this occult bullshit knew the Abbases had fled, and they came out to add the next props. Then we arrived, and they didn’t expect that.
They thought I’d get the frantic call from the Abbases and fret and worry and eventually send someone from town to check it out. Instead, I showed up with five others in tow and settled in to stay the night.
The sensible thing would be for the intruder to retreat. But whoever is doing this is bold and determined, and instead they used our arrival to crank the spook show up to eleven. Skip the slow progression. Just scare the ever-loving shit out of us. If they’re hidden far enough back on the island, they might even think we all fled when Sadie took off in the boat.
Except we didn’t flee. We figured out what they’re up to, and now they’re trapped on this island with us. At the very least, our search will scare them into taking off, and we’ll hear their boat start up. We might not reach it in time to confront them, but we’ll get them the hell off my island.
That’s what’s driving me right now. The overwhelming compulsion to get them off my island.
Myisland. Every rock, every tree, every wildflower and weed is mine. Yes, this is nature, and no one owns it, but I am the guardian of this particular speck of earth, and I’m not letting anyone push me off it.
Would it be different if they’d offered me a good price upfront? If they hadn’t looked at me and seen some middle-class sucker who didn’t know what she had? Worse, looked at me with my divorce and my new teenage ward and my dead sister’s debt, and decided my desperation could bolster their investment portfolio.
Had they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, Iwouldn’thave refused it. I couldn’t—in those zeros, I’d see Madison’s dream college, and no matter how much I love this island, I would have put her first. So, in a way, I’m glad they lowballed me and pulled this bullshit to scare meoff, because I don’t care what they offer now. I’m not budging. I’d rather take on the debt to put Madison through school.
