Eight

I wheel, ready to run, and I smack into Garrett. His hands go to my shoulders to steady me, and all I see is him looming and something inside me goes wild, and I smack him away as I backpedal.

"Hey!" he says. "It's me."

"Yeah, that'd be the problem," Jayla says as she runs in.

Madison is right behind her and whatever she sees on my face has her looking from me to Garrett, her brow furrowed.

"Bed," I say. "On the pillow. There's…" I swallow, unable to get the rest out.

"There's what?" Garrett says.

I pivot and see the pillow. There's nothing on it.

"No," I whisper. "I saw—"

"Whoa!" Jayla is three strides past me, moving to the bed, Madison beside her, and her arms fly out to keep Madison back.

"Is that…?" Madison says.

I hurry over. The hank of hair is still there. When I dropped the coverlet, it partly covered it, and I couldn't see it from the doorway.

My heart slows as I catch my breath.

Because an actual chunk of scalp is better than an imaginary chunk of scalp?

I move up to the bed. As I bend to examine the hair, Garrett moves in too close to me, and I instinctively want to move away, but force myself to stay firm and focus on the hair. It's strands of dark brown hair maybe four inches long.

Kit arrives then, coming up from the main level, where he'd been checking the access logs. Our eyes meet. Then he sees the pillow and gives a start.

"It's too long to be Nate's," Madison says. "And it can't be Sadie's. She's blond."

"Her hair's dyed," I say, feeling oddly guilty, as if I'm being catty when I'm only making an important point. "It could have come from underneath, at the roots, but her hair was never this dark. This is also shorter."

I force myself to turn to Garrett. "What's your take?"

Until now, he's been quick to play the cop card. That's why he's here, although after my talk with Sadie last night, I know that was just an excuse. The point, though, is that he is a detective and I only play one on the page. Yet when I ask his opinion, panic flits across his face.

Shit.

How long exactly have you been a detective, Garrett?

Not long. Not on cases that involve forensic evidence like this.

Forensic evidence.

Is that what this is? Is that what Nate's hand is? Clues in some murder-mystery-weekend crime?

I shiver, but I'm not really thinking of it like that. I'm distancing myself to analyze this hank of hair so I don't completely break down because there is chunk of hair and blood and scalp in Madison's bed.

In the bed where Sadie was.

Sadie, who is now missing.

"You're right," Garrett says gruffly. "It's not her natural hair color, and it's too short."

"But being short wouldn't matter," Madison says. "The hair could have been cut."

"Good point, kiddo," Garrett says, and I try not to bristle. At least he's being nice to her.

I bend closer to look for split ends, which would suggest the hair hadn't been cut. The smell hits me. The stink of blood but something else, too. The very first hints of decay, like at my family's ramshackle cottage when we didn't check a mousetrap fast enough.

I rise. "This was ripped out more than a few hours ago. The scalp part smells of decomp."

Garrett gives a derisive snort as he bends. Then he straightens fast.

"Laney's right."

He backs up, runs his hands over his face and hisses an exhale through his teeth, shoulders relaxing.

"It's not Sadie," I say softly.

"Then who the hell is it?" Jayla says.

Garrett recovers and folds his arms. "It's a prank. The hand, too."

"If you are telling me that's not a real piece of someone's scalp," Jayla says, "or a real fucking hand—"

"Course it's real," Garrett says. "From a morgue or something."

"A morgue?" Jayla says. "Seriously?"

I step between them. "He's suggesting that someone took them from a dead body, maybe at a funeral parlor, someone due to be cremated or…" I throw up my hands. "I don't know the specifics, but Garrett means that someone could have gotten these parts from an already-dead body and staged them to look like Nate's hand and someone else's hair."

"Is that possible?" Kit says.

"For a writer, anything is possible." I look at Garrett. "In real life, though…?"

"Last year, we got called to a scene where a guy's wife died during the pandemic, and he never notified anyone because he wanted to keep her body for—" His gaze falls on Madison, and he clears his throat. "For collecting her paychecks."

"Yeah, that isn't what you were going to say," Madison mutters. "I'm not ten, and I don't think anyone needed that story, but we get the point." She turns to me. "So that might not have been Nate's hand? Just some guy's, and they added nail polish and a class ring so we'd think it's Nate?"

Her tone is matter-of-fact, but I don't miss the look in her eyes. The look that does make her, in this at least, ten years old, begging me to say this isn't Nate.

I want to say that. God, how I want to say it.

Absolutely. That makes total sense.

I look at the bloodied hair. Would it make more sense that someone murdered Nate?

I answer slowly, working up to what I hope will sound convincing. "If it was Nate, that means he had to be killed before the Abbases arrived two days ago. Someone would have reported him missing. They'd have notified me."

"See?" Garrett says.

I continue, "Someone has been staging things to scare guests. I don't know what the point of that is, but it didn't seem to be working. They could take things to the next level."

"The point would be to scare you," Kit says. "Yes, it's the guests who see it, but ultimately, the fallout is on you. On your ability to rent this place. Even, possibly, on your comfort with coming here, especially alone."

"Money," Jayla says. "Now that's a motive Kit and I understand."

"You think someone's trying to scare me into selling?" I say.

"I've had several people contact me directly," Kit says. "They find the last record of sale and get in touch with me. I refer them to you, with the warning that I don't think you're looking to sell. Have they contacted you?"

"I've had a half dozen offers in the last two years."

"For a place like this?" Garrett says. "Yeah, it's fancy as hell, but it's the middle of nowhere, without even cell signal."

"It's the pandemic," I say.

His face scrunches. "What?"

"The pandemic. That's the appeal." I wave around us. "Perfect isolation, in the event of a global catastrophe. People have started thinking more about that. They want to buy it for some kind of apocalyptic luxury shelter or develop it for those who'd like a vacation home in an isolated community. I'm a divorced schoolteacher—they're hoping I'm desperate and they can get it cheap. I even had someone who started by offering condolences on the death of my sister."

"Motherfucking vultures," Jayla says. "Why didn't you call and get me on their asses? Or even Kit?"

"Even Kit," Kit murmurs.

"You know what I mean. You're not a lawyer, but you're tough when you need to be, and you're used to dealing with assholes like this."

I glance back at that hank of hair to avoid an answer. Why didn't I reach out to my ex-husband? To the former friend who only called me once since my marriage to warn that if I broke Kit's heart, I'd regret it?

Wasn'this heart that got broken, Jayla, but you're right—I sure as hell regret it.

I straighten. "I think this could be our answer. Someone staged the hex circle and the creepy wind chimes hoping I'd freak out and sell. They didn't know they were dealing with a horror buff who blew it off. So they went hardcore. Scratches in the bedroom closet paired with a severed hand and bloody chunk of hair from an already dead body."

"Then Sadie saw the hair, flipped out, and ran," Madison says. "Taking the boat with her."

Jayla shakes her head. "More like she found the hair, knew it was a prank, and decided I was responsible. Or Laney and me in cahoots, as if we're all back in high school. She got pissed off, stormed out, and took the boat to teach us a lesson."

Madison looks at Garrett. "Would she do that? Leave you behind?"

Garrett hesitates. Then his shoulders sag. "Yeah. She lost her temper and wasn't thinking. Stormed off, like Jayla said. Then she'll realize she abandoned me and come back."

"I checked the door logs," Kit says. "Someone opened the back door two hours ago and then relocked it. So we agree Sadie left on her own. There is zero evidence to support any other theory, yes, Counselor?"

Jayla nods.

"Detective?" Kit says to Garrett.

Garrett hesitates, but nods.

"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 light was on. 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."