Chapter 73

73

It's Jo Leger.

Her eyes are closed, but she looks anything but peaceful. A huge bloody contusion has burst open the skin above her right eye. The skull above is caved in, the surrounding hair messy and tangled with a gritty liquid mix of blood and sand.

The white top that Elin had mistaken for Farrah's shirt is speckled with sand, smeared drops of blood alternating with spatter.

It's obvious now that she knows it's Jo—the harder musculature of her limbs, darker skin tone. Only superficial similarities.

Stepping forward for a closer look, Elin can't stop swallowing, her throat impossibly dry.

She tugs on a pair of gloves, reaching out a hand to Jo's neck to feel for a pulse. As her fingers rest there, her breath is high in her chest in anticipation, but the skin gives her nothing, only a residual warmth.

Her heart drops. Jo's dead, but hasn't been for long.

Michael must have been close by when he discovered the bag, and she and Jared, too, had been in striking distance when they'd run to meet him. The stakes are inevitably raised; a killer who has shed their fear of being discovered—or the consequences—is capable of anything.

Elin carefully examines the wound. Cause of death seems to be blunt force trauma to the skull. But where's the weapon?

Her eyes dart around the enclosed space, the area outside. No sign of any kind of implement.

But still, a glimmer of hope: their choice of Jo as a victim has revealed something fundamental.

Three deaths from the same group of people. Bea. Seth. Jo. What might have been rationalized before as a coincidence now seems to be a pattern.

Why this specific group of victims?

After seeing the setup in the cave, they'd been leaning toward the idea that the victim selection might be random, circumstantial, tallying with the group of teenagers the killer had chosen before, but now she wonders if it is in fact more deliberate.

While the killer's motive might still stem from a delusional belief about the curse or Reaper's Rock, they might also have reason to target this particular group.

"Farrah?"

Elin jumps, but it's only Jared, standing outside the overhang, Michael behind him.

"No," she says quickly. "It's a guest."

He steps back, visibly shaken. "Is she...?"

"Yes. Not long." After taking some photographs, Elin edges her way back from under the overhang; Jared asks another question, but his words are drowned out by the noise of the ever-growing storm.

It's as though the island, silent and still for so long, has finally found its voice—a voice sounding out through the sea and the rain and the whistling of the wind, an angry caterwauling of gulls.

The energy that was only simmering before—the faint crackle—has become a roar.

"Shall we go?" Jared's voice jerks her from her reverie.

Elin nods, an insistent pulse of fear thudding in her chest. She needs to get an update on backup and then speak to the group—what's left of them.

Hana, Maya, Caleb.

It's time to push harder.