‘Tom, I think we need to call the police.’
He was right, wasn’t he? We couldn’t leave Greg’s body here like this. And if the abductors needed to wait until the night of the new moon before conducting their ritual, surely that meant their threat to kill our kids if we called the authorities was intended purely to scare us. To stop us doing exactly that.
And I had fallen for it. I should have called the cops last night.
I took out my phone and dialled 911.
While it rang, David said, ‘I’m going to drive back to the resort, let Connie know what’s going on. She must be going out of her mind.’
‘Okay.’
As I watched him run back to the car, 911 came on the line. I explained everything to the call-taker. It took a few minutes to answer her questions. I didn’t mention new moons or rituals because I was pretty sure that would make them think I was a crank.
‘How long will it take?’ I pressed. ‘Before somebody gets here?’
I could sense her tapping at a computer, and remembered what Wyatt had told me. The nearest police were ninety miles away. It would take them at least an hour to get here. The ambulance might be quicker, but they were already responding to a couple of emergencies in the area where the patient had some hope of survival.
An hour. I couldn’t stand around waiting for that long.
The children were still playing on the lawn next door, the picture of innocence. Sweet faces concentrating on their game. Had Buddy and Darlene been like this once? I remembered what Nikki had told me, about the twins’ mother running off because she thought her kids were evil. It was hard for me to imagine looking at a two-year-old child and thinking that. Difficult, naughty, uncooperative. All two-year-olds are terrible; everyone knows that. What had she, their own mother, seen in them that made her run? Had she foreseen this? It made me shudder.
‘The secret cabin,’ I said as I crouched beside the children. I couldn’t think where else my daughter and Ryan might be. ‘Do you know where it is?’
In tandem, they pressed their lips together and shook their heads.
I got my wallet out of my pocket and pulled out all the money I had. Around fifty dollars. I showed it to them. ‘If you can tell me, I’ll give you all this.’
Their eyes widened but the girl said, ‘We don’t know.’
‘Nobody knows,’ said the boy.
I stood up straight and swore under my breath.
‘Have you seen Buddy and Darlene today?’ I asked.
Tight lips, shaking heads.
I went back into the house and upstairs, avoiding Greg’s bedroom and the bloody bathroom. I headed straight into the room with the KEEP OUT sign on the door. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to find. Something that would give me a clue to the location of the hidden cabin. A diary. A map that had been passed down through the generations. I knew how unlikely it was, but I was desperate. Frankie was there. She would be terrified. They could be doing anything to her. Things I didn’t want to think about.
Buddy’s room looked like any other teenage bedroom. An unmade single bed. A computer on a desk. The funky smell that teenage boys exude. Nothing that screamed ‘a psychopath lives here’。 The posters on the walls looked like they’d been there since his childhood. WWF wrestlers. Minecraft.
I rifled through the drawers of his desk. I pulled out exercise books, pens and other stationery, ancient Pokémon cards and Lego mini-figures, tangled headphones and broken charger cables. Detritus, none of it useful. No diary. No map with a big arrow that said Secret Cabin.
I went into Darlene’s room. It looked like it had been ransacked by burglars. Pens and scissors and glue sticks scattered across the desk. Dozens of perfume bottles, many of them almost full. I picked one up. Chanel No. 5. Where had these come from? I knew immediately. She had taken them from cabins at the resort. Using Greg’s keys to go in and help herself.
There was a glass tank in the corner. Inside were several black and brown insects. I bent down to take a closer look. Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I’d seen them in a pet store once and wondered what would possess anyone to want to keep such creatures as pets. I took a step back, disgusted, and heard a noise outside the room. Something scraping. A breath?
Someone was here. Upstairs. And it was way too soon for it to be the police.
I looked around for a weapon, wishing I’d picked up a knife from the kitchen. Surely Darlene would have something lethal in her room? There was a glass paperweight on a shelf. It contained the body of a scorpion. I picked it up, hefted it in my hand. It was solid enough to knock someone out.