“Cash, would you say you were close with Monroe?”
The sound of boots shuffling against hardwood was her only warning, before he was in front of her, too close. She couldn’t back up because the couch was behind her.
“What? No? Not really?” Cash said, all questions instead of statements, coming at a rapid-fire pace. “Why? What are you thinking?”
His gaze was locked on her face, searching. She took a deliberate step around him, so that she had a clear path to the exit.
She ignored the last bit and focused on the denials. “But she came to you. With the pregnancy thing?”
“She didn’t come to me.”
What?
Mia paused where she’d been slowly inching toward the stairs. No fast movements, no obvious tells, and put voice to the startled thought. “What?”
“It wasn’t Monroe who told me about the baby.”
Everything stopped, the background noise, her heart, her breathing. Her eyes closed as she inhaled. The wisp of that idea solidifying into something she could finally grab a hold of, finally wrap her arms around.
The spaces between the lies.
“Shit,” she said on the exhale, then opened her eyes to find Cash watching her closely. “I need you to try to get in touch with Izzy. Try the Rockport police department. My cell is out.”
Mia was already running down the stairs, her boots heavy against the protesting wood. She hadn’t given him any instructions on what to tell Izzy, but her mind was tangled in the web of lies that had been woven since they’d landed on the island. Her finger ran along the sticky edge of each thread, sliding closer toward the knot in the middle, where she poked, where she dug a nail in and tried to pull it all apart.
She was out the front door before she stopped. Panting, she bent a little to catch her breath and her balance.
They’re all lying. Get the hell out of there, Hart.
Did Izzy know enough to put it together?
It wasn’t Monroe who told me about the baby.
The last dot slipped into place, the image complete, just as the blow struck the back of her head and the world faded into black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IZZY
Izzy studied her reflection’s red-rimmed eyes and the dark circles beneath them in the bathroom’s mirror as the morning sun finally spilled into the hotel room.
She hadn’t been able to sleep, hadn’t been able to turn off her brain, so she’d just paced all night, left with nothing to do but hope Mia had gotten one of her dozens of texts. Best-case scenario: Mia wasn’t responding because of the storm. Worst-case? Izzy didn’t want to think about that.
Slapping at her cheeks to get a little color in them was mostly useless, but Izzy just shrugged at the result. There was no time for anything else—merely passable would have to do.
Some finagling with the local cop who had been manning his desk overnight had gotten her the last address that was on file for Charles Bell. Izzy grabbed the piece of paper on which she’d jotted it down, then swung out the door of the hotel room, finally able to do something beyond sitting there going slowly crazy.
It was early enough that the streets were mostly empty, and the quiet drive gave her too much time to think.
Why had Sammy lied about the body’s identity? And where the hell was Robert Twist, their original victim? Was he still alive?
And if Mia had recognized the person in the morgue, that meant that Peter had been the one to come to the station in the fall, not Robert. That lent credence to the theory that he’d found something in that abandoned house on the Bell land, something connected to Mia.
If he’d told Robert about it, though, why go back? Was he foolish enough to try to solve the mystery himself? Twist had been asking about him, or an artist at least when he’d first gotten there. Peter had even been his last outgoing call.
What Izzy didn’t understand was Sammy’s long-term plan. The state could have sent something back in the full toxicology report; someone who knew Robert Twist could have shown up to claim the body. Rockport could have shipped over the dental records they’d been running.
The only possibility that made sense was that there had been no long-term plan.
Izzy knew it with the same certainty that she’d known Sammy Bowdoin had been pushing the suicide angle way too hard on that first meeting. He’d been casual about it, but even then she’d been able to pick up on it.
A strange thought nipped at her anger, begging for attention, and a tiny part of her, the one that didn’t want Mia to be crushed by even more bad news, suggested that maybe this had been Sammy’s attempt at protecting Mia.
If they’d wrapped up the case quickly, called it suicide, and left, they wouldn’t be in danger from whoever put that body in the bay.
Protect their own. That’s what those islanders did better than anything else. Had Sammy been protecting Mia?
The address for where the Bells had apparently lived fifteen years ago was three turns ahead. It was a modest two story tucked into a row of modest two stories. The contrast was so stark to the decadent mansion perched on the edge of dramatic black cliffs that Izzy actually checked the numbers on the note she’d written herself just to be sure.
It was right, though. She pulled to the opposite curb, her serviceable Honda blending in with the other affordable compact cars. This was solidly middle-class America.
If the Bells had really come here, they must have been desperate to escape whatever they had been leaving behind.
Izzy grabbed at the flimsy coffee cup she’d snatched on her way out of the motel room, bringing the Styrofoam to her lips as she kept her eyes on the front door of the house. The sludge was lukewarm at best, but it was another hit of caffeine, and at this point beggars really couldn’t be choosers. She finished it in one gulp.
It was unlikely she’d get anything out of the current owners about where Charles Bell was now, but at least she had a starting point. After she talked to whoever had bought the house, she’d fan out to the neighbors, maybe get lucky. Fifteen years or so wasn’t that long to live in the same place.
There was something strange about Charles staying in the house where his wife had died. According to the local guy Izzy had sweet-talked over the phone, this had been Charles’s last-known address as recently as six years ago. Why had he stayed in it all that time? Wouldn’t that have been torture, walking the hallways hand in hand with the ghost of your supposedly beloved wife?
Cold and calculating. That was the kind of person that Charles would have needed to be to kill his daughter to cover up whatever Asher had seen. That was the type of person who remodeled their house instead of moving out when the flames consumed Bix.
Though if Bix hadn’t died until she was on the mainland, that meant that if Charles was responsible for Asher’s murder, it wasn’t because Charles had been covering up Bix’s death like Martha Lowe had suggested.
A spiky headache was pulsing in her frontal lobe, so Izzy tossed her empty cup onto the floor and grabbed her bag. Just as she went to step out of the Honda, a car turned onto the street. It crawled past each house until it turned into the driveway of the one Izzy was watching.
There was a woman behind the wheel, but Izzy couldn’t tell her age, or much beyond her diminutive build. Izzy ducked her head for a better view while the woman climbed out of the beat-up sedan.
She wasn’t young but wasn’t elderly, either. Her hair was pulled back into a low bun, the sunlight catching on the silver strands threaded throughout. Both the style and color probably added a few years, but Izzy would guess midforties.
The woman was clad in pale blush scrubs and a white cardigan that she was straightening as she walked the path up to the house.
Izzy made her move.
“Excuse me,” Izzy called while still across the street. She glanced for cars and then broke into a light jog.
The woman startled, clutching her purse where it swung at her side. Izzy held up her hands, palm out.
“Hi, I’m Detective Isabel Santiago,” Izzy said, as soothingly as possible. “I’m working on a case in the area. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
The introduction was enough for the lady to loosen the white-knuckled grip she had on her strap but also earned Izzy a thorough up-and-down perusal. The woman had thick, straight eyebrows that turned her face severe—a look that was not helped by her tight, pinched lips.
“Do you live here?” Izzy asked when the silence passed the point of socially acceptable.
That earned Izzy a quick jerk of her head. “No,” the woman finally said. Her voice was deep, almost surprisingly so. But it fit with the too-broad shoulders and the square jaw. “Let me see your ID.”
Izzy pulled the leather case that held her badge, number, and picture, and held it up and open for the woman. She leaned in to study it, her hazel eyes slipping from it to Izzy’s face more than once. Izzy didn’t mind. She actually wished more people would be as careful when she told them who she was.
Finally, the woman nodded once and straightened. “I don’t live here. I’m just the home nurse, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Teresa.”
Izzy knew no last name was forthcoming.
“Are the owners home?” Izzy asked, turning a bit toward the house.
In her peripheral, Teresa shrugged. “Yes. But I doubt he’ll be able to answer your questions.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
“He sleeps more than anything these days,” Teresa said as she started toward the stoop, digging in her purse. She pulled out a large ring with more than a dozen keys jangling together. With the efficiency of someone who was familiar with the place, Teresa unlocked the door and began switching on lights in the foyer even as she dumped her bag on a side table.
“Are you here all day?” Izzy asked, for lack of anything better to say. If the owner was out of it, there wasn’t much she was going to get from her time here.
“Hmm, yes,” Teresa answered, her back toward Izzy. “Vera comes at night. Our schedules are off by about an hour.”
Izzy nodded even though Teresa was already heading toward the kitchen. So she hadn’t gotten lucky; she hadn’t really expected to. “There’s no other family then?”
Before following Teresa, Izzy dipped into the living room. No personal touches, no photos, no knickknacks set out solely to collect dust. Everything was clean, neat. But it lacked any warmth.
Izzy continued on to the next room, where Teresa was pouring herself a cup of coffee.
“Vera sets a timer for me.” Teresa held up her mug, the smallest smile on her lips. It countered the harsh lines of her face until she was almost pretty. “And, no. No family. No one visits.”
“Have you worked here long?”
“Five years,” Teresa said. “All right, he’s on the second floor. When he’s awake, he’s aware of what’s going on. You can see if he’ll answer any questions.”
Teresa led the way, and Izzy followed silently until they paused outside a closed door. Teresa knocked lightly and then pushed it open.
The room was like much of the rest of the place. Bare, utilitarian. There was a simple dresser, a nightstand, a single lamp in the corner by a chair. A man was asleep on the bed, his salt-and-pepper hair gone more toward the former than the latter. His body was clearly frail beneath the heavy comforter.
“Sleeping,” Teresa said, the I told you so evident in her tone.
“Oh.” Izzy grabbed Teresa’s wrist before she could walk into the room. “What’s his name?”
“Charles,” Teresa said, shaking Izzy off and heading over to fluff an extra pillow. “Charles Bell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MIA
Mia blinked into consciousness, pulled from the darkness by the pain at the back of her skull. She tried to lift a hand to explore, but something caught at her wrist, hard plastic digging into her skin.
Bound. She was bound. And had a head wound.
Panic threatened, a copper tang in her mouth, but she swallowed against it. She brought her tied hands up together and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, hoping to dispel some of the fuzziness as she tried to remember what had happened.
The picture.
Mia had been in Cash’s attic, going through the photo albums. There’d been that picture of the five of them, her and Lacey in the foreground. Now she was in a small room. But what room? Was she still at Cash’s?
She opened her eyes. Wherever she was being held looked like a basement. An old one. The walls were stone, the floor concrete.
Mia was propped up against something heavy and large, and there were small puddles of water gathering in the slight dips of the floor.
Her feet were bound with thick rope instead of the plastic zip ties that held her wrists, and her pulse points fluttered against each other, her heart refusing to steady out. She breathed through it.
Wrists tied, ankles tied. No gun. But that was to be expected.
Her fingers trembled anyway, fear turning them shaky.
One thing at a time.
The rope. That she could deal with. Knots were made to loosen, and she’d been taught every kind there was while growing up in a fishing town.
Her wrists would be next. Once she could stand, she’d be able to get enough leverage to break the plastic.
She’d also been stripped of her coat and the fleece she’d worn underneath it. A distant part of her mind recognized that she was freezing, but even the slight chattering of her teeth didn’t make the reality of it sink in. Her blood was on fire, laced as it was with adrenaline.
Barefoot. She was also barefoot, her boots nowhere near her. That was smart of her captor. It would make it harder for her if she did escape.
Had she been out long? Was she still on St. Lucy’s? If she was, that meant several feet of snow outside. Dressed as she was, she would be risking frostbite even if she made it out of the room.
The alternative wasn’t appealing, either.
Pain sliced through her head, a spike that came out of nowhere. Tentatively, she brought her bound hands up over her shoulder to feel along her hairline for the bump. Her knuckle nudged it and then came away sticky. Blood. The hit had been hard enough that it had broken skin.
What had happened after the picture?
Cash. A quick flash of his face in shadows was followed by a bolt of agony that left her panting. She tried again.
Cash. Shadows. Dead eyes. The picture. Each time she grasped for more details, though, they faded only to be replaced with that piercing ache.
Time passed. She wasn’t sure how much, but she started measuring it in the waves of pain that ebbed and flowed with her attempts to figure out what had happened.
Move. She had to move.
Mia maneuvered into a position where she could tug at the knot at her ankle without jarring her head. Two nails broke off, as she worked the rope, the skin around her fingers burned raw, but she kept going. Whoever had tied it had known what they were doing.
They’re all lying.
It came like a breath, the memory, so that she almost didn’t notice it. It came when she’d been distracted, when her mind had emptied.
They’re all lying.
She paused. Who were all lying?
The more she pushed, the more it skittered away. Frustration built, threatened to turn into something more, something that was frantic and wild. It gathered in her chest, pressed against her tear ducts.
It’s okay. It’s okay. Just keep working. Focus.
Mia dug into the thick threads of the rope once more, her determination costing her another nail. She let her thoughts go static once more.
No gun. No shoes. Rope on ankles. Bound wrists. Head wound. No other pain that she could identify. No broken bones.
The checklist ran on a loop, a manic whirl that she didn’t even try to control.
No gun. No shoes. Ro
pe on ankles. Basement. Concrete floor. No windows. One door. One door. One door. How would she get out? It would be locked. One door. No gun. No shoes. No window. One door.
Get the hell out of there, Hart.
She only realized her breathing had gone ragged when she swayed with the lack of oxygen. Dropping her forehead to her knees, she concentrated on pulling in air, allowing her lungs to expand and press against her rib cage. It didn’t hurt. That was a good sign. She held on to that as her mind tested the boundaries of the leash she’d just put on it.
Get the hell out. She was trying to. But it wasn’t a thought, rather an echo again. Just like earlier. They’re all lying.
Hart. No one on the island called her that. Who would call her that?
Izzy. Her head throbbed, but this time the pain was bearable, blunt instead of barbed.
She let her eyes unfocus. Izzy had told her that. When? In the attic. The buzz, she’d felt it in her jeans. There was something else there. Something important.
Mia breathed in again. There was a hint of salt, just like everywhere on the island.
Izzy was gone. She was trying to find . . . someone. Important. Someone important.
The artist.
No.
No, she wasn’t trying to find him. Because . . .
The artist. The artist.
The artist was dead.
Mia blinked everything back into focus. Her broken thumbnail had been digging into the already-pink skin by her ankle. The pain barely registered.
The artist was dead. So where was the reporter? Robert Twist. If the artist had been the dead man in the bay, that meant Sammy was in on it. Was he the one holding her? Had he knocked her out? But where? The last she remembered she had been in Cash’s attic.
She flinched away from what that meant and went to work on the knot again. It was starting to give beneath her desperate fingers.
This time she let herself listen instead of think. It seemed likely she was below ground, but maybe she’d be able to hear footsteps above her—if she could get the blood roaring past her eardrums to quiet down.
Only when sound started filtering in again did she realize how much she’d been missing locked inside her own world. Pipes rattled and protested, a radiator hissed somewhere in the corner, a steady drip of water pinged against something solid. The background noise of a Maine basement.
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