By three a.m. David and Connie had looked everywhere. Neal had gone around the whole resort knocking on cabin doors, waking people and asking if they’d seen a pair of teenagers, showing them a photo of Ryan on Connie’s iPad. Nobody had seen them. Most people, Neal told us, seemed stunned to have been woken by the man they’d seen onstage a few hours before, as if they must be dreaming.
Yes, I wanted to say. Surely they were starstruck. This is all about you, isn’t it?
But I didn’t say anything, of course. Didn’t say anything to any of the three of them. I wanted to take David and Connie aside and confide in them. How would the person who sent the note know I’d spoken to them? But I couldn’t risk it.
I had eventually gone back to the cabin to attempt to think things through, make a plan. Sat down on the couch. That must have been around four thirty. I didn’t remember anything after that. Exhaustion and stress had pulled me under.
And now somebody continued to bang on my front door and shout my name.
It was David.
He was holding a sheet of paper. A note. He’d had a note too.
He waved it at me. ‘I was about to get in my car to find a police station, and this was under the wipers.’
I took it from him and read it as he came inside and paced around, his hands on his head, pulling at his hair. It was exactly the same as mine, except with Ryan’s name instead of Frankie’s.
I handed it back to him.
‘It was on your car? Did you look at your car last night?’
‘No. I didn’t go near it.’
Had the note been put there at the same time mine had been left inside my cabin? I guessed so. I wasn’t sure why the Butlers’ note had been left on their car, but perhaps Greg or the twins hadn’t been able to get into their cabin; they’d lost the key or been disturbed by a passer-by.
It didn’t matter right now. But I wished David had found his note last night.
I fished out the note I’d received, screwed up and tattered after being in my pocket all night, and handed it to David.
He read it. ‘When did you get this?’ he demanded.
‘Last night.’
‘What, after you got back here?’
‘No. Before.’
I thought his eyes were going to pop out. ‘What the fuck? Before? You mean, while we were searching everywhere, you’d already seen this?’
‘It says not to talk to anyone. An instruction you’ve already ignored by coming here.’
His mouth opened. He looked at the note he’d found on his car. He closed his mouth.
‘Maybe it’s okay,’ I said, looking around. ‘He’s not going to know we’ve spoken to each other, unless—’
Something struck me. Greg was the manager of Hollow Falls. He could easily have bugged this place, couldn’t he? He could be listening to everything we were saying right now.
I gestured for David to follow me outside. He didn’t move until I hissed, ‘Come on.’
I looked around for somewhere safe to talk. Greg couldn’t have this whole place bugged. He couldn’t have bugged the insides of our cars.
David seemed to catch up with my thinking. He unlocked his car, got into the driver’s seat and I got in the other side. Maybe they were watching, but they wouldn’t be able to hear. And maybe I was taking a huge gamble, perhaps we should both be sitting in our cabins doing nothing except waiting – but surely the important thing, from Greg’s perspective, was for us not to go to the authorities. David and I talking to each other wasn’t going to wreck his lunatic plan, whatever it was. He’d just been trying to buy himself time, cautioning us to remain isolated. Time for what, I had no idea.
A horrible thought struck me. Had he already hurt Frankie and Ryan, and wanted more time to get away before we called the police? Oh Jesus, is that what the notes were for? A stalling attempt so he could get on a plane or flee north?
I sucked in a breath and tried not to panic. What I needed to do was fill David in. We had to be operating with the same information.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I need you to listen without too many interruptions or questions.’
I told him everything I knew, going back to Ryan’s offending Instagram post, the threatening messages, my conviction that Buddy and Darlene, or maybe Greg himself, had taken Donna’s beta blockers. I told him about Frankie seeing masked figures in the woods the night she and Ryan had argued. I described what Frankie and Ryan had seen yesterday, and how the twins had attacked them with rocks.
‘Then, last night, we saw Buddy and Darlene with Greg. He’s their dad. He must be the person in the crow mask. Then I talked with Nikki—’