THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE,” TREY SAID AS HE watched Gabe ready the rented boat. The cop was on the dock of the marina, not being a damn bit of use. “That place hasn’t been used in decades. More than half of that island washed away, and the lighthouse itself is barely standing.”
“I need to go inside,” Eve said. She was on the boat with Gabe, despite Trey’s protests. When they first arrived at the dock and the cop had seen them, Gabe thought the man might physically stop Eve from getting on the boat.
Trey still looked as if he wanted to grab her and make a run for it.
That would be a mistake.
From the edge of the dock, that punk Johnny was watching them. Turned out that Johnny’s uncle, Clay, actually owned the marina, but when they arrived, Johnny had quickly told them that Clay was out, already searching for Alexa.
Johnny sure as hell had acted as if he didn’t want to rent them a boat. But with Trey there, the guy hadn’t been able to refuse. Now the kid kept skulking around with his busted lip and glaring at him. Way to be a fucking help, kid.
Wade called him earlier, when Gabe had just arrived at the Marina, and warned him about Johnny’s uncle.
Looks like your lady had another lover on the island.
Gabe was planning to find Clay later that day. Men connected so intimately to Eve were automatically on his suspect list. He’d be questioning the guy soon enough.
“You can’t go inside that lighthouse,” Trey said now, stalking closer to the water’s edge. “I told you, the place is sealed off. There’s nothing in there.”
The cop hadn’t realized a body was stashed in his fort, either.
“Sand and bird shit,” Trey snapped as he jerked off his cap and waved it at them. “That’s all you’re gonna find out there.”
“Then that’s what we’ll find.” Gabe kept his voice mild. Eve was determined to go out to that lighthouse. He’d stopped her from going out in the storm—because that would have been suicide in the dark—but he wasn’t holding her back any longer. Especially since he wanted to search the place, too.
Trey swore. “Do you even know how to handle that boat?”
Gabe smiled. Since he’d owned a boat just like this one when he was fifteen, he figured he could handle it just fine. “I’ll get by.”
“Look . . . don’t stay out there long, okay? The forecaster is saying the storm in the Gulf is stalling, and the longer it stays over that warm water, the better chance it has of turning into a depression, or, hell, even a tropical storm.” Trey ran a hand through his hair. “That’s the last damn thing I need. If a storm that strong comes this way, the power company always cuts off the feed to the island.”
“We lost power last night,” Gabe reminded him. The boat was almost ready.
“For less than an hour—and don’t even get me started on the number of calls I got then.” Trey was still glowering. “And half of those calls were from Pierce.”
From the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Eve stiffen.
“He’s worried about you,” Trey said quietly. “Just like I am.”
Eve crept toward the cop. “Is he . . . here?”
Johnny edged nearer to them, not even trying to hide the fact that he was eavesdropping.
Trey turned to glare at him. “Don’t you have something else to do? Shit, I thought you were supposed to be helping Clay with the search, too.”
Johnny seemed to pale. “I . . . always will help Clay. Always.”
Right, like that wasn’t a little too intense. But Johnny turned and backed toward another boat.
When Johnny was out of range, Trey said, “Pierce was in Mobile an hour ago, so he’ll be on the island by the time you get back. I think . . .” Trey looked down at the cap he cradled in his hands. “I think Pierce was trying to give you space, but he couldn’t stay away. He knows you’re Jessica, just like I do. The guy had to know when he took one look at you.”
But Eve shook her head. “In Atlanta, Pierce acted as if he weren’t even sure I was Jessica. Why show such concern now? Why would he—”
“Fear,” Trey answered flatly. “It can make a man act insane. He’s afraid of finding you, then having to lose you all over again.”
The boat’s motor growled to life.
“I know just how he feels,” Trey said, his words barely rising over that growl. “I found you, then had to watch you go off with this asshole.”
Gabe didn’t exactly like being called an asshole.
“Alexa’s parents are coming in.” Trey pushed away from the boat. “They’ll arrive after lunchtime. And I get to tell them—hell—what? That we don’t know if their daughter ran away or if a serial killer has her?”
“Let the FBI do the talking,” Gabe advised the cop as his hands tightened around the wheel. “That’s the shit they’re good at.”
Trey’s eyes met his. “Keep a close eye on her. That lighthouse is crumbling apart, and one misstep could send someone to the hospital.”
He didn’t plan to make any missteps.
Carefully, he took the boat out of the marina. Eve was silent as they slipped away. He glanced at the boats, taking in his surroundings carefully and—
Gabe’s eyes narrowed when he caught sight of Johnny. Still watching them. Glaring. While Gabe stared at him, Johnny lifted his hand and flipped him off.
Then Johnny hurried inside the marina.
That little jerk was getting on his last nerve. When he came back, he’d deal with Johnny . . . and he’d find out just what Clay Thompson knew about the days leading up to Jessica Montgomery’s disappearance.
But first . . . first he had to let Eve confront a nightmare that had kept her up all night.
The lighthouse waited.
WHEN TREY SAW Johnny stalking toward him, he barely contained an eye roll. I don’t need this shit.
But he wasn’t particularly surprised to see Johnny there. The kid’s uncle owned the marina, and Johnny was always hanging around the place. Clay should have taken the guy out on the search.
“Who is that jerk?” Johnny demanded. His nose was still swollen and his lip was busted.
“Someone you don’t want to mess with again.” He had enough on his plate without having to worry about Gabe beating the shit out of Johnny.
“He a cop?”
“No.” The boat was chugging ahead. The lighthouse. Of all the places, why the hell would Jessica want to go there? No one went out there, not anymore.
Sure, a few years back some folks had gotten together and tried to raise money to protect the place. They’d spent a fucking fortune shoring up sand out there to try and make the island bigger, but then that sand had just broken away—the “new” island had split in two, and folks turned away from the place.
There wasn’t any damn thing out there.
“I know the woman with him. I knew her as soon as I turned around and saw her on the West End.”
Now that wasn’t real surprising. Johnny had been living on the island with his uncle for the last five years.
“You don’t forget a woman who looks like that.”
Where was the guy going with that?
“I remember . . .” Johnny mused as he tilted his head to the side. “You two used to hook up, right?”
“Don’t you have work to do?” He and the FBI agents had commandeered some of the boats and pulled in the locals to help search for Alexa’s body.
Because the options don’t just have to be that the woman ran away or a serial killer took her. We live on a fucking island. She could have just drowned. Every year, some drunk tourist did.
“She left your ass.”
He could totally understand the temptation to punch Johnny in the face. No wonder Gabe had sent the guy flying over the bar. But I’m supposed to be the cop, and people are watching.
Early morning fishermen were all over the place. Too many eyes and ears.
“Heard she caught you cheating on her with some other blonde . . . and she threw you to the side.”
He tried to keep his body loose. “That’s not what happened. You shouldn’t listen to gossip, kid.”
“Then you tried to get her back, right here at the party at the marina, right? But she ran out on you, left in the middle of that big dance.”
She had. He’d called after her, but Jessica hadn’t stopped. What the fuck had he been supposed to do? Beg? So he’d stayed put, watched her leave.
Then she’d vanished.
“Bet it pisses you off that she’s with that other guy now, bet it makes you so mad you want to pound his ass into the ground.”
You’re supposed to be the cop.
“If it were me, I’d go after him. I wouldn’t take no sh—”
“It’s not you.” His voice was low, lethal. When he’d been a kid, his father’s voice had roared every time he got angry. Trey wasn’t like his old man. When he got mad, he went soft. His voice a whisper of hate. Of fury.
Johnny backed up a step.
“Get to work, Johnny. And forget everything you think you know about me and my business.”
He looked back out at the water. Gabe and Jessica were gone.
“When Clay comes back, tell him to come see me. We need to talk some more.” About Jessica. About the past. About the hell that could come calling to paradise.
“When he comes back,” Johnny repeated, but the fellow’s voice was low, hoarse.
Trey gave a grim nod, then he headed toward the boats.
THE PLACE LOOKED just like her painting.
Too much like it.
Eve stared up at the lighthouse. Gabe had anchored the boat near the narrow sandy stretch of beach—beach that wasn’t near the lighthouse, or at least not touching it. The narrow strip of sand—Sand Island—was actually to the west of the lighthouse, and she had to cross the water, sinking and struggling as the waves pushed her, in order to reach the rocky spot that was the home of the lighthouse.
Her shoes were in her hands. She wore a pair of shorts, and her legs were wet from the crashing waves. As Eve was crossing that divide of water—the narrow beach on one side of her, the lighthouse on the other—the saltwater stung her skin. It splashed toward her face when she sank deeper, and she remembered—
The taste of saltwater in my mouth. Swimming, struggling to stay afloat even as my limbs burned.
The rocks seemed to bite into her bare feet and she was desperate to get out of that water. And as she trudged forward, she tilted her head back and tried to see the top of the lighthouse.
Seagulls cried out.
“Doesn’t look as if anyone has been here in a while.” Gabe made his way to the lighthouse entrance, or what Eve guessed was the entrance. He shoved against an old door, but nothing happened. Grunting, he tried again.
The door didn’t open.
Eve slowly made her way around the other side. She didn’t see any other entrances. The lighthouse was made of heavy bricks, surging high into the sky.
Above the entrance she saw the number 1871. Must have been when it was built. It was odd to think of this place out there, on the little pile of rocks, lasting for so long.
Gabe turned away from the door. His gaze swept the narrow section of rocks that was their perch. “I need something to pry it open.”
There were two rectangular windows higher up on the lighthouse. For an instant Eve could have sworn she saw someone in that top window, staring down at her. “Gabe!”
He’d grabbed what looked like a long metal pole that had washed onto the rocks. He was pushing it against the door, straining with all his might, his muscles bulging—
And the door opened. It swung in with a hard screech, the cry just like a woman’s scream. Eve froze at that sound.
Gabe dropped the pole. Stepped inside.
Sweetheart, come with me . . . let’s play a game.
Eve hurried forward. She put her hands on the old bricks of the lighthouse. She expected terror to hit her.
It didn’t.
Just as before, when she’d first set foot on Dauphin Island, she had the feeling that she was home. Where I belong.
Wary, she moved inside. The place smelled of the sea, and sunlight trickled through the windows from above. The spiral staircase was old, rickety, and it looked as if one wrong or too hard step would send it crumbling to the ground.
Gabe was at the base of the staircase, about to go up—
“Stop.”
He turned toward her.
Eve shook her head. “I don’t want you to get hurt.” She motioned toward the railing he’d been about to grab. “That always comes loose. Be careful.”
“Always?”
Her breath was heavy in her lungs. “Always.” Because she’d been here. She had the memories. Running up those stairs. Nearly falling when the railing had wrenched loose beneath her hand.
But . . . someone had caught her. Wrapped an arm about her.
Be careful, don’t want to ruin the fun . . .
And she’d laughed. She could hear the echo of her laughter in that place. When she’d painted the lighthouse, she was terrified, but now that she was there, inside . . .
I’m not scared here. I like this place. I belong here.
And that felt wrong.
“I want to go up first,” Eve said.
His dark brows climbed, but Gabe didn’t argue. Good. She slipped by him, didn’t use that railing, and started climbing up all of those steep, twisting steps that led to the top of the lighthouse. The waves pounded outside, loud, rough.
“Watch out for step number nine,” Eve said without looking down. “It’s cracked.” Because she could see herself, jumping over that step, laughing.
You won’t get me . . .
“Just how much do you remember?” Gabe asked as he followed her up.
“Not enough.” She kept climbing. They reached the first window. She looked out. “I . . . that’s the fort.”
His shoulder brushed against hers. “Yes.”
They had a perfect view of the fort from that vantage point. A perfect view of the place where the poor woman’s body had been entombed.
Gabe leaned closer to her. “I’m betting if you use a pair of binoculars, you’ll be able to see the golf course perfectly, too.”
She could already see the beach that led to the old country club.
Eve turned away from that window. Went up higher. Smelled the ocean.
Her hand slid over the scar on her neck.
“Eve.” Gabe’s voice was sharp because—
She didn’t just smell the ocean any longer. With every step she took, she was inhaling a deeper, cloying scent.
“Eve, stop.”
But she was almost running up those rickety steps now, her footsteps pounding so hard they reverberated and—
Someone was looking out from the second window. Eve had thought that she’d seen someone, just for a moment, when she was down below.
Eve staggered to a stop. Her right hand fisted around the shaky railing.
And she stared at the woman who was half tucked in the nook that led to the second window. A woman with blond hair and a bloodstained body. The woman’s head was tipped forward, that length of blond hair hiding her face.
The scent of death—now she understood that cloying scent.
“Alexa?” Eve whispered. Then she reached out. Her fingers slid under the woman’s chin.
“No, Eve, don’t!” Gabe jerked her away from the blonde.
The woman’s head tilted back an instant and—sand poured from her mouth.
“Oh, my God.” Nausea rolled inside Eve and she thought she’d be violently ill, right there. Her cheeks went ice cold, then flaming hot as she stared at the woman.
“Alexa,” Gabe whispered.
Her throat had been cut and . . . sand was there, too. Falling from her wound, mixing with the blood on her clothes.
Eve spun away from that woman. She grabbed for the windowsill because her knees were knocking together. This place—it was too much.
Let’s play, sweetheart . . . His voice, that rasp, but . . .
You’ll never catch me. I’m better at this game. Her nails scraped across the windowsill. That echo of a response—it was her echo. She could actually see herself, shouting back those words and laughing as she ran down the twisting stairs of the lighthouse.
The lighthouse that the killer used.
Her head lifted. She stared out that window. She could see straight across that water, all the way to the fort. There was a faint rustling sound behind her, but she refused to look back. Gabe was checking the body. She couldn’t see that. She wouldn’t.
Eve tried to suck in a deep breath, and then—then a light, a flash, hit her eyes. She raised her hand, blocking the glare instinctively, and that was when she saw the second boat.
A boat that was idling in the water, just a few feet away from the small, sandy island. They hadn’t heard it approach. Because of the waves? Because they were so far up the lighthouse?
“G-Gabe?”
Someone was down there. A man in a baseball cap, running back toward the other boat. A sleek motorboat with a blue covering on the top and blue stripes on the side.
“What the fuck?” Gabe demanded, then he was running back down the stairs, heading below, rushing toward the guy in the baseball cap. Eve wasn’t about to be left behind with Alexa’s body. She ran after him, her feet flying recklessly over those stairs.
Gabe beat her outside, and as soon as she shot out of the door after him, Eve could hear the other boat’s engine as it roared away. The guy was fast—and he was driving straight for Dauphin Island.
“Stop!” she shouted. Right. Like that was going to do any good at all. Then she sprinted toward her and Gabe’s boat. He was already in the little stretch of water between the lighthouse and Sand Island. She snatched off her shoes again and followed him, scrambling up the sand.
Their boat was just a few feet away and—
It exploded. The whole boat flew up, sending a ball of fire flashing up into the air, and Eve fell back into the churning water.
WADE WALKED ALONG the ramparts at the old fort, his gaze on the waves in the distance. The skeleton had finally been removed from its tomb in the fort. All of that time . . . trapped in the walls.
He fucking hoped the woman had been dead before the sadistic prick walled her in.
Victoria would do her thing with the remains. How that woman could stand being around the dead . . . he’d never know. And Victoria talked to the bodies. He’d heard her on too many occasions. Talking as if the dead could respond to her.
They can’t, Viki. They’re long gone.
His gaze slid over the water once more—
What. The. Hell.
He could see a black plume of smoke out there, rising high, billowing into the sky. Smoke meant fire . . . and that location, that was where the lighthouse was.
Gabe had gone to the lighthouse. When he’d called Gabe with the news about Clay, his buddy had told him he was renting a boat to go out there. Gabe and Eve.
And the place was burning.
He shouted for the cops even as fear tightened around his heart.
“EVE!” GABE ROARED her name. Their boat had been blasted into a hundred pieces, chunks had flown everywhere, and the blast had sent him hurtling into the waves.
He pushed through the water, standing in depths to his waist, and shouted for her again. “Eve!”
But she didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her. And he was going out of his mind.
That bastard on the other boat was long gone. He’d come, rigged their boat to explode, then gotten the hell out of Dodge.
“Eve!” He swam to the left, heading closer to the rocky shore of the lighthouse. Eve had been on that side—hadn’t she? He’d been so determined to get to the guy who’d blown up the boat that he hadn’t paid attention to Eve.
Now she’s gone.
No, no, no! “Eve!” He swam blindly because the water was so murky there. His hands were reaching out, desperate to find and grasp her.
What if she’d been hurt by the blast before she went under? What if she were unconscious? She could be drowning while he dicked around out there shouting her name.
He swam deeper. Harder. His lungs started to burn, but Gabe didn’t care. When he’d been a SEAL, he was trained to stay under during every imaginable condition. He could keep holding his breath. He knew from grim experience that he wouldn’t pass out for a while yet.
That would give him time to find her. He would find her. Eve. Eve!
Then he bumped against something soft. Something that reached for him and held on tightly—something precious.
He locked his arms around her and kicked to the surface. When his head broke from the water, he sucked in a desperate gulp of air, and so did the woman in his arms. Eve choked a bit, but then she was heaving in her breath, gasping desperately and clinging tightly to him. As tightly as he clung to her.
He managed to fight his way back to the beach, never letting her go, not for an instant.
When they reached the sand, he heaved them both up on the shore. The scent of fire and gasoline filled the air, and smoke still rose from the boat’s remnants—those that littered the little shore.
Eve rolled over, laying on her back and still breathing deeply. He leaned over her, pushing her wet hair away from her face. “Are you hurt?” When she didn’t answer fast enough, his hands slid over her, looking for a wound, “Baby, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I swam.” Her voice was quiet, strangely devoid of emotion. “Until I couldn’t swim any longer. Then I . . . I drowned.”
What. The. Fuck? “Baby, look at me.”
She didn’t look. “Then I was a ghost. I walked. I walked and I walked . . . and strangers picked me up. We drove. Just drove . . . because I couldn’t turn back.”
He caught her chin in his fingers, sending sand sliding over her smooth skin. “Be here, right now, with me.” Because he was afraid that her past had reached out to her. They’d wanted to stir up her memories, but—
Right now, I need her with me.
“You didn’t drown. You’re with me.” He leaned over her. Pressed a frantic kiss to her cheek. Her forehead. Her mouth. “You’re with me.” The terror was still with him, too. The gut-wrenching fear that he wouldn’t be able to find her in the water.
He pressed his forehead to hers. Just held her there for a moment. His fingers were shaking. He’d been through countless battles, faced hell again and again, he’d killed . . .
And his fingers were shaking because he’d come too close to losing her.
“Why?” Eve whispered. “Why did he . . . do this?”
Gabe forced his head to rise. Then he stood, his feet sinking into the sand. He’d lost his shoes somewhere in the water, and his clothes clung tightly to him. “I don’t know.” It sure didn’t fit with the killer’s M.O. “Maybe he knew we’d found Alexa, and he was trying to buy some time in order to escape.”
She sat up, pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around her updrawn legs. “Time to escape?”
Yes.
“Did you see his face?” Gabe asked her, because she’d been the first one to spot the guy. He’d only seen the baseball cap and the boat.
For an instant Eve hesitated, then she shook her head. “I don’t know who he was.”
But her words . . . they were still too stilted. Is she lying to me? Why would she lie?
“Do you have your phone?” Eve asked him suddenly. “Can you call for help?”
He shoved his hand into his pocket. Big surprise . . . the phone was gone, and he doubted the fates would shine on them and his phone would magically wash up on shore. “Help will come,” he said as his gaze slid over the water. The fire had shot plenty of smoke up into the air. Someone would see those black clouds. Someone would come this way.
It was just a matter of time, time that they didn’t have. Because every moment they spent trapped on that island was time the killer could use to vanish.
“He’s running because he’s scared,” Gabe said grimly. The lighthouse waited, with Alexa Chambers’s body inside. “He’s been bringing them here. Maybe torturing them here before he dumped their bodies—”
“But they were alive when they went into the sand.”
His laugh was cold. “Look around, Eve. There’s sand here. What’s to say he didn’t kill them out here, where no one would see them? Where no one would hear them? Fuck, maybe he dug them up when he was sure they were dead and moved the bodies then.” He didn’t know what the sick freak could be doing.
But he was going to find out.
He bent. Caught her hand in his. “Come on.” He hoisted her up in a fast move. There was no way he’d just sit there and wait for help to arrive. Sitting on his ass wasn’t his style.
“I don’t want to go back.” Eve was still. She’d dug her heels into the sand. Vaguely, he noticed that her shoes were gone, too.
“We won’t touch the body.” Hell, no, they wouldn’t. He wanted Victoria to work her magic on the victim. “But he could have left something behind in that place.”
In the distance, thunder rumbled. His head jerked. Way back out over the waves, far past the lighthouse, Gabe thought he saw the flash of lightning. The storm that he’d been warned about? How long did they have before it rolled in?
“We need to search the lighthouse.” The waves were already getting rougher around them. What if Trey had been right about the storm? If the weather roughened and a depression or a tropical storm came their way, there was no telling what kind of damage might be done to the lighthouse.
It had withstood storms before, sure, but the ragged appearance of that rocky shore was proof that the lighthouse wouldn’t stand forever.
“I don’t want to go back.” Eve’s voice was soft and sad. “It’s not what I—I thought.”
She wasn’t making sense. He turned toward her. There were no marks on her body that he could see, but maybe he’d missed an injury. Carefully, his fingers slid through her wet hair. “Baby, does it hurt?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes on him. “It feels as if I’m breaking apart.”
“Eve?”
She pulled away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for! You’re just as much of a victim as that woman up there!”
Eve flinched. “What if I’m not?”
“I don’t even know what you’re saying.” He grabbed her hand again. He wasn’t about to let her out of his sight or out of his grasp. “Let’s see what we can find in that place.”
“But help—”
“Help is coming,” he promised her grimly. “The Coast Guard, the local cops, Wade—someone will be hauling ass out here for us.” But he didn’t tell her about the worry that nagged at his mind.
Without a boat, they were trapped on that island. Sitting ducks. What if the killer came back? Armed with a gun?
They had to go back into the lighthouse. It was the only bit of shelter, protection, available to them.
The door was still open, and as soon as he had Eve inside, Gabe pushed his shoulder against it and strained to close it—not fully, but enough to slow down anyone who might come after them. He would have shut the thing all the way, but the door was already so old that he worried he might just wind up sealing himself and Eve inside—and wouldn’t that be a fucking kick?
He saw that her stare was on the stairs.
“Not up there,” he told her, making sure that he brushed his body against hers. He had the weird feeling that Eve was pulling away. Crazy, when she was right in front of him. “I think I saw a room, down below the stairs.” Maybe it had been part of the old lighthouse keeper’s quarters. Maybe it was just a storage room. Either way, he was going in there.
“I . . . remember being here,” Eve said.
“He brought you here?” Gabe demanded.
She was still looking up at those stairs. “I should be afraid.”
He was afraid. Worried that freak out there would make another attack. I have to protect her.
“But I’m not.” Her lips pressed together. “And that’s wrong.”
He shook his head. “Shock and adrenaline. Just trust me, okay? We’ll ride them out together.” Then he pulled her away from the stairs and toward what he thought was a room. Only . . . the door there was stuck, too. Stuck and rusted, and he drove his body into it again and again—
“Push it at the bottom,” Eve said softly. “The weak spot, near the hinges . . .”
He looked down, found that spot and heaved. The door opened with a groan.
The room inside was small, barely five feet long. The only light came from behind them as they crept inside. He saw that there was a map on one wall. “Dauphin Island,” he said, recognizing the shape. He narrowed his eyes, struggling to see in that dim interior. There were scratch marks on the map. Four marks near the area he knew would match with the old golf course. One mark at the fort and . . .
At least a dozen other little scratch marks, careful X’s all scattered around the island.
No, the fuck, no.
Something crashed behind him. He spun around and saw that Eve had bumped into a little table, an old wobbly table that had been crammed into the corner. When he’d come into the room, he’d been so intent on the map that he hadn’t noticed the table.
A small black box—a jewelry box?—had been on the table, but now it lay smashed on the floor.
“I—I’m sorry,” Eve stammered as she fell to her knees and grabbed the box. “I didn’t mean to break it!”
She lifted it up and jewelry came tumbling out. Bracelets. Necklaces. She started to grab for the jewelry, but he lunged forward and caught her wrist in a too-tight grip. “Leave it.”
Because there could be prints on the jewelry.
“Is that blood?” Eve asked him, her gaze on a glittering, diamond tennis bracelet.
“Yes.” Dried blood.
“Why . . . why are these things here?” Her tortured gaze rose to his. “Why?”
“Because sometimes killers like to keep trophies from their kills.”
“There’s too many pieces of jewelry.” Her voice was hushed.
“Yes.” Too much jewelry, too many tally marks. They’d thought that the Lady Killer had only taken seven victims.
Are there more?
“This is why he ran.” Gabe’s words were a growl. “He knew we’d find his little treasure chest, and the bastard is trying to get away.”
By the time they got back to the Island, he could be long gone.
“That’s . . . that’s a lot of jewelry.” Eve rose to her feet. Stared down at the gems. There was sorrow on her face. And what looked like guilt. “It’s wrong,” she whispered.
“Eve?”
“Maybe it’s better not to remember.” A tear leaked from her eye. “Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe I don’t want to remember.”
She backed away, trying to rush out of the room, but he grabbed her and held tight.
“I don’t want to be here!” she nearly yelled. “There’s a dead woman upstairs—a woman who looks too much like me!” Her voice rose more with each word. “Sand came out of her mouth, and I can taste sand on my tongue!”
“Eve!”
“That’s not my name!” She shrieked, then froze, her eyes widened in horror.
He knew then that she was at the edge of her control. The place had obviously brought parts of her past back. Parts that she wanted to face. Parts that she didn’t. “Jessica,” he said softly, but the name rolled awkwardly from him. He didn’t know Jessica. He knew Eve. He’d fucked Eve. Eve had cried out for him. She’d—
She pulled from him and ran to the front of the lighthouse. “Dammit, stop!” He hadn’t heard a boat approaching, but he hadn’t heard it before, either. He lunged forward and grabbed her from behind, locking his arms around her and pulling Eve back against him. Jessica. Her name is Jessica.
“I have blood on my hands.” Her voice was so low he could barely hear her. “I can see myself. Running in this lighthouse. There’s blood on my hands . . .”
“Because he probably brought you here.” Her wet hair was against his mouth. “Baby, he brought you here, but you escaped.”
“I have the knife. I used it. We were playing a game.”
“So you got the weapon away from the prick and you stabbed him. Fucking good. Maybe we can get an evidence team out here and they can find his DNA—”
She shuddered against him. “I was laughing. He was laughing. It’s wrong.”
His muscles tensed. “What?”
She heaved against him, trying to break free, but he didn’t let her go.
“I’m wrong,” she said, her voice lower. “Everything I’m remembering, it’s wrong.” She whispered, “Please, please, let me go. I can’t breathe in here. All I smell is her blood.”
WADE RAN FOR the police boat that was tied to the edge of the marina.
“Hurry the hell up!” he shouted to the cop who was trailing him. He hadn’t been able to find Trey—the guy was out somewhere on the island doing a search, and since the cell connection on that place was a crapshoot, he hadn’t wanted to waste time trying to find the man.
Not when fire had been in the sky.
“W-We can radio for the Coast Guard. They’ll be able to help us!” Officer Dennis Sebastian said, his words huffing out as he hurried to keep up with Wade.
Wade jumped onto the police boat. He really didn’t know shit about boats so he needed that guy to get him to the lighthouse.
Dennis leapt on after him and got the boat moving into the water—hurry, hurry, hurry! Dennis looked like he was in his early twenties, with sun-streaked blond hair, and his hands were shaking as he steered them away from the marina.
Wade grabbed the radio.
“You have to get the channel . . .” Dennis quickly pressed some buttons for him and took the radio with one hand. Then he was talking to someone on the emergency channel, telling him about the fire on Sand Island. Asking for all available hands to report to the lighthouse.
As far as cops went, Wade knew the kid was a good one. He’d been working hard during the case, doing his damnedest and not getting too shaken when he saw the skeleton in the fort’s wall.
“Make this thing go faster,” Wade ordered him.
Dennis didn’t question him. His jaw just locked and they went even faster as the boat’s emergency sirens sounded. Good. They would make everyone else get the hell out of their way.
Hold on, Gabe. I’m coming. He’d let his friend down before, and Wade had sworn that he’d never make that mistake again. He’d seen Gabe hit rock bottom, seen him get lost to rage and despair as he’d held his sister’s broken body. I’m coming, Gabe.
He grabbed for the binoculars near the steering wheel. They had to go around the side of the island before they’d spit out into the open water that led to the lighthouse. Hurry, hurry . . .
Water flew around them. Dennis’s hands stayed tight around the wheel.
The minutes crawled by.
They passed another boat, one with blue stripes and a blue top that was moving just as hell fast as they were.
“Johnny!” Dennis yelled. “Get out of the damn way!” But the roar of the motors and the waves snatched away his order.
The blue-striped boat shot to the left, heading around them and back to the marina.
“That kid always races too fast,” Dennis said, eyes narrowing as he turned the boat a bit. “He’s gonna kill someone one of these days.”
Right then, Wade wasn’t concerned with some speeding punk. When they got back, Dennis could put the fear of God into the guy. The only thing that mattered to Wade right then was getting out to that lighthouse and finding out if his best friend was alive or dead.