Black Rock Bay

by Brianna Labuskes

  “Killing myself?” Mia filled in when Izzy broke off. “No, not that I can remember.”

  “What about Asher, Monroe?”

  “No.” Her voice came out a hoarse whisper. None of them had.

  “Have you . . . ?” Izzy cleared her throat. “Have you ever wondered if there’s a grain of truth in those theories?” Her tone was soothing. “Maybe not a crazy artist. But someone else. Have you ever thought through motives?”

  “I don’t . . .” The fog. That’s what Mia remembered so well. That deep, deep fog. “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t remember any of it, could someone else have been there that night?” Izzy prompted. “Cash maybe?”

  No.

  Mia traced her gloved hand along the edge of her coat, slipping a finger under the fabric. Even though she couldn’t feel the scar, it helped. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. I remember . . .”

  Izzy stepped closer, their shoulders nudging. “What?”

  Mia wanted to curl up, ignore these questions, these gentle pokes at a wound that was so raw, so tender still. After all these years. She licked her lips. Then she glanced up, meeting Izzy’s gaze. “I remember doing it.”

  Silence dropped. When Edie’s house came into view, Izzy reached out, tugged at Mia’s arm to get her to stop, to force her to look at Izzy.

  “Do you really remember doing it?” Izzy asked. “Or do you just think you do?”

  It took a few tries to get the words out, her brain heavy and slow. “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you only know that? And nothing else? Why are you so certain?”

  Mia looked down toward her wrist. “The pain, I think,” she said. “It was sharp, where everything else was blurry. It sliced the moment into memory.”

  “You’re taking it as fact, though,” Izzy said. “Come on, think like a cop instead of a scared teenager.”

  The roughness of Izzy’s voice actually helped. Mia had always been so scared about what lay beyond the fog that she’d never tried to clear it, had tried to never even look directly at it. But Izzy was forcing her to.

  And, yes, they’d worked enough cold cases to know memories couldn’t be trusted. They warped, they shattered, they were put back together in ways that looked nothing like the original. Too many people took them as fact. But memories didn’t work like that. They were more of a perception of what happened than actual reality.

  “Maybe you remember the sting of it,” Izzy said, keeping up the pressure. Part of Mia wanted to shrug her off. Part of her thought Izzy was onto something. “But do you remember holding the razor?”

  “It was too easy,” Mia said. Because that had always been a truth to her. That had been her reality. The sting of pain. And how easy it was. “The blade. My skin.”

  “Maybe it was too easy because you weren’t holding the razor,” Izzy said. And just like that, a different perception, a different reality. Something Mia had never even considered as a possibility. “Someone said it was suicide, and your brain ran with it. You know that happens, Mia—it happens all the time.”

  Everything in her tilted and then righted itself.

  Mia had known people thought she was responsible for the pact, that they thought she had talked Asher and Monroe into it. If either of them had been the ones to survive, they would have faced the same rumors. It was just how people were.

  But she’d never seriously considered homicide. That was a fringe theory to give bored people something to talk about.

  “Shit,” Mia said on a breath.

  “Yeah. And, so here’s the kicker.” Izzy glanced toward Edie’s house, and there was a bit of longing in her gaze at the warmth that blazed from the windows. “Robert Twist was digging into it. Their deaths.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t need Izzy to elaborate. “And look where that got him.”

  Izzy grimaced. “It could still be unconnected.”

  Maybe.

  Or someone was desperate to keep the secrets of the past buried.

  The warmth from the mug against Mia’s palms was just on the right side of bearable, and she pressed her hip bones into the counter as she stared out the kitchen window into the night.

  There was an old swing set in the backyard that Mama had never taken down. The metal was rusted, and the chains hollered when any of the village kids used it.

  Now it was blanketed with snow, the bottoms of the seats brushing against the windblown mounds that piled up beneath it. The white powder tumbled over the edges of the side each time a gust swept through, and the moonlight caught the glint of silver on the top bar. “Your father was so proud of himself that day,” Mama said from behind her, her voice pitched low. It was well after midnight, and Izzy was asleep just down the hall. She’d ducked into the den right when they’d walked into the house. Once again, Mia had taken her lack of questions as a gift and hadn’t done anything to break the silence herself.

  “You refused to swing on it, though,” Mama continued. “Broke his little heart.”

  Mia brought the cup to her lips. “I’m sure he recovered.”

  She didn’t remember the day, didn’t really remember the swing set, either. She had never been one for metal when there was a whole forest to get lost in.

  It must have been a thorn in her father’s side, though, a constant reminder that she was a disappointment, that his life was a disappointment. She wondered why he’d never taken it down. But people were funny that way. They picked at scabs to keep the wounds open and then were angry and confused when they still bled.

  “Do you remember Asher that summer, Mama?” Mia asked, because she was no better than the rest of them. She scratched at scabs, too. “Did you ever suspect anything?”

  “That he was sad?” Mama poured herself some hot water out of the kettle Mia had put on. “No. Especially not once that girl came around.”

  That girl being Monroe Bell.

  The first time Mia had met her, it had been at the lighthouse. The old building had long been out of use and so became the de facto hangout spot for the older teenagers during the summers. There was a patch of beach near the rocks at its base, and someone always had a bottle of something to pass around.

  It had been May and far too cold for bathing suits, but Monroe and Lacey Bell had been wearing bikinis anyway. Mia remembered snickering at the amount of exposed pale white flesh that had been on display.

  The boys hadn’t laughed.

  Mia had been of the age where she should’ve resented Monroe—for her curves, or her dark lashes, or the way she drew both Asher’s and Cash’s eyes when she tugged the bottom edges of her suit from where they’d slipped up her cheeks.

  But Monroe had waved at the length of her own body, then tilted toward the water’s whitecaps. Not quite Florida, I guess. There was something so adult about the way she said it, careless confidence tempered by self-deprecation, and Mia had been immediately won over.

  Asher had handed over the bottle of Jack. This will warm you up.

  They’d stayed the rest of the day, swigging the amber liquid and playing truth or dare until finally they were drunk enough to get Monroe to kiss Asher. When their lips had met, Mia had watched closely, the light from the bonfire turning their faces golden.

  She’d always wondered if there was anything more than friendship between her and Asher. Despite the fact that she’d had Cash, there was a question, always just sitting in the back of her mind, not really begging for attention but not fading away, either.

  Something odd had curled in her belly when she’d watched the two of them, but it wasn’t rancid like jealousy, wasn’t sharp like anger. It was just . . . there.

  Cash’s fingers had slipped up underneath the back of her hoodie, stroking her spine lightly, sending shivers out along her skin like slowly shattering glass.

  When she’d managed to tear her gaze from the fumbling couple and the way Asher’s hand had ridden high along Monroe’s sweatpants-clad thigh, Mia had found Lacey watching her instead of her siste
r. The girl had smiled and shrugged, then stood up and made her way toward the water, an acknowledgment that she was out of place.

  Cash’s mouth had been against Mia’s a breath later, his hand curling around her hip, drawing her closer. And she’d given in to the pull.

  “I was so blind that whole summer,” Mia said now, breaking the quiet that had fallen. Mama stood next to her, both of them staring out at what should have been a picturesque landscape. Mia found it achingly lonely instead. A forgotten swing set, a hushed forest, snow that was suffocating instead of pretty.

  Her stomach churned, growling at the emptiness it found there. She sighed, laying her temple against Mama’s shoulder, the night making them both softer, blurring their battle lines.

  Suicide or murder? Suicide or murder? Why did that question keep coming up? For the reporter. For Asher, Monroe. The idea that the teenagers’ deaths were anything but suicide was too fresh, too shaky in her mind. So she focused on Twist instead.

  “If the reporter’s death was a homicide, the killer’s probably someone you know,” Mia said.

  Mama just sighed. “They probably accomplished what they needed to accomplish, though. Not really worried about it, to be honest.”

  Straightening, Mia nudged at Mama’s arm. “You don’t care?”

  “More worried about you,” Mama said, and took both their mugs to the sink.

  If Patty Masterson’s information was to be believed, then there was probably good reason for that concern. She wouldn’t tell Mama that, though.

  “Tell me something no one else will tell me,” Mia said, pushing her palms against the counter and jumping up slightly until her butt hit laminate.

  “You’re too thin.”

  Rolling her eyes, Mia let her heels rest against the cabinets below her. “About the reporter.”

  Mama turned back to her from where she’d been spending too much time scrubbing at mugs that were barely dirty. Her mouth tugged down in a deep frown, but Mia knew that was just her expression when she was thinking.

  “The day before he disappeared, he talked to Earl Bishop,” Mama finally said.

  “Cash’s dad?” Surprise turned it into a question.

  “Yep,” Mama answered, though she hadn’t actually needed to. Mia knew Earl Bishop well. Knew the way he’d thought she wasn’t good enough for Cash back then. “Not saying it’s anything. Just saying it’s something no one else will tell you.”

  It was true. The islanders were protective in general. But when it came to the Bishops, they closed ranks completely. Even she would be left on the outside.

  She thought about Cash’s fists, balled at his sides. Cash. Who hadn’t been at the lighthouse that night.

  Mia rested her chin against her shoulder, her eye catching on the shiver of the swing’s chain. The house groaned with the wind, then settled. “It keeps coming back to that summer, doesn’t it?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IZZY

  They were being watched.

  Izzy had been a cop long enough to recognize the sensation of eyes on her back. And, exposed as they were in the forest, it was only more pronounced.

  “Feel it?” Izzy asked Mia, keeping her voice low. The trees blocked the wind and the snow soaked up any residual sound, the hush ruptured only by the way their boots broke through the crust.

  “Yeah.”

  Neither of them glanced over their shoulders. It wouldn’t do any good—the shadows were deep, the sun still low in the sky.

  They were heading toward the small cabin that Robert Twist had rented for the three weeks he’d been on St. Lucy’s. There was little need for cars on the island, or so Mia informed her. One gas station kept the population of St. Lucy’s fueled all season long. So they walked.

  Izzy had been daydreaming of warm leather seats and a well-working heater when she’d first realized someone was trailing them.

  “Think it’s our guy?” Izzy asked, her fingers at her zipper. She tugged it down enough so she would have easy access to her gun and cursed whoever it was behind them as the bitterly cold air poured into the space between her jacket and shirt. “Or whatever you saw last night?”

  Mia jerked her shoulders in what might have been a shrug beneath the layers of fabric and kept trudging forward, her hands securely in her pockets. Alert, but not worried. So different from how she’d reacted after the lighthouse last night. Izzy could still picture the torn-up snow left in Mia’s wake as she’d sprinted toward the trees.

  “Don’t know,” Mia said “No one lives down here. It’s just the cabin. So whoever it is, they’re probably here for us.”

  She and Mia were heading south of the village and had been walking for about ten minutes now, each step taking them deeper into the forest, away from help if they needed it.

  “It’s weird Twist rented a cabin so far away from everyone he was here to talk to.” Izzy couldn’t imagine that had been easy, trekking into town every day in the midst of seemingly perpetual storms.

  “Not many options. There aren’t any rooms for rent in the village.”

  Out of all the weird things about this place, that one almost made sense. Izzy couldn’t imagine St. Lucy’s attracted enough visitors to warrant anyone running a hotel in town, or even renting out a room.

  Izzy’s thumb brushed against her gun’s grip, a nervous habit she’d picked up after that one time she’d worked undercover for six months. The weight of the holster was a security blanket she still hadn’t learned to take for granted. “You said the artists all stayed at the Bell mansion, right?”

  “Yeah,” Mia said, her voice calm and even, despite their tail. There was something about Mia’s gut that Izzy trusted—God knows it had saved her ass a time or two—and apparently Mia’s gut was feeling okay with whoever was behind them. “There was also an old house near the northern cliffs that used to board the transient workers who came during the boom. The Bells would have their staff get it ready enough for any overflow during the summers.”

  “Tell me about them,” Izzy prompted, even though half her attention was on the woods. Whoever the person was, they weren’t making any sudden moves. “The Bells. The parents, that is.”

  The land started to slope down, and Izzy had to concentrate on redistributing her weight into her thighs. She was ready to be done with snow.

  “Charles and Bix Bell,” Mia said.

  “Bix Bell, really?” Izzy said as the cabin finally came into view. Rudimentary was the first description that came to mind. “That’s a great name.”

  Mia’s laugh was muffled by her scarf.

  “The mother,” she said. “She was an artist, hence the residencies. Married Charles Bell of the Boston Bells. Old money there.”

  “Was she amazingly glamorous?” Izzy asked, and now she wouldn’t be able to stop picturing Gatsbyesque decadence—flapper dresses and champagne fountains and untenable love—despite the fact that the Bells would have been decades late to that particular party.

  “In a flower child kind of way,” Mia said. “All the Bell girls were beautiful. The boys on the island were immediately gaga over them.”

  Izzy smiled, endeared by the phrase. “Gaga?”

  “You know teenagers and their hormones.” Mia waved her hand around a little vaguely in the air. “But, yes, Bix was glamorous and gorgeous. Charles was this straitlaced New England Harvard-educated psychiatrist, but he adored Bix—it was so obvious.”

  “That’s cute,” Izzy said. “If they didn’t come back here, where are they now?”

  Mia shook her head. “I assume the mainland. Boston, probably.”

  Izzy wasn’t sure where they fit in, if they did at all. Their daughter was part of the apparent suicide pact, but that was fifteen years ago, and the only thing they had linking that to the reporter’s death was Patty Masterson’s gossip. If the Bells had never returned to the island, it was unlikely they had a role in the current case. But she repeated the names to herself to cement them in her memory anyway as Mia fumbled wi
th the lock.

  The door opened with a protest, a metallic scream that sent a blackbird on a nearby branch into flight. Izzy’s eyes snagged on the sleek, dark creature as its wings beat steadily against the thick gray sky. A shiver slithered across her skin, the fine hair on her forearms standing on end, and she couldn’t help the quick glance she threw to the woods behind them.

  Just as expected, there was no one there.

  She hurried to follow Mia into the cabin.

  The heavy, black curtains were drawn, but the sun pouring in through the door was enough to partially illuminate the room. Something silver shimmered on the desk, and Izzy crossed the room in two long strides.

  “Laptop,” she told Mia, who had moved toward the unmade bed that took up the majority of the floor space. A small stand next to it held a lamp but was clear of any other clutter.

  There were notebooks upon notebooks stacked next to the computer, as well as a mostly empty bowl of soup with just a few carrots shriveled at the bottom and a mug with a dried-up tea bag clinging to the ceramic.

  A sink, an out-of-place bright yellow mini fridge, and a few cabinets passed as the kitchen, and by the bed was a darkened emptiness that Izzy assumed was the bathroom.

  Her guess was confirmed after she flipped on the stark single bulb that hung above the toilet. Rustic.

  Dandruff shampoo and a cheap generic bodywash sat on the ledge behind the plastic curtain that was more soap residue than anything else at this point.

  Izzy turned back to the main room, her eyes touching on the bare surfaces. “Would be hard to tell if there was a disturbance here.”

  “The owner said the door was still locked when she came in after they found the body,” Mia said, her voice muffled since she was searching through the cabinets. “I just checked the windows. They don’t show signs of forced entry.”

  A black bag tucked into the narrow nook between the headboard and the wall caught Izzy’s eye. She knelt and inelegantly shoved her fingers into the pair of latex gloves she’d pulled from her pocket. Once they were on, she unzipped the duffel with careful deliberation.