This is what you love. Why you do the job you do. For this: the feeling of pushing yourself to your very limits.
She’d tried once to explain to Will what it felt like, a moment like this. But words can’t even begin to conjure it, that high-wire fizz, when it feels like you’re nothing but your senses, nothing but nerve and muscle and blood pulsing through your veins. Outside of yourself. Perhaps that’s the appeal: escaping the space inside your head.
Finally, she nods. “You lead.”
Once she’s clambered up into the cave, she pulls out her own flashlight and they start moving forward, but within a few yards, Elin is coughing violently. The air is laced with something chalky, as if she’s breathing in pure dust. She can taste it, feel it coating her lips, tongue.
All at once, a gripping claustrophobia—her lungs tightening, as if they’re holding on with a viselike grip to each inhalation. It’s been a few months since she’s needed anything other than her preventative inhaler, but it’s warranted now.
Quickly pulling it from her pocket, she puffs. One, two, three.
“You okay?” Steed asks. “Pretty dusty in here . . .”
“Fine. Asthma, that’s all. I’m usually all right, but this is extreme.” As the medicine hits her lungs, her shoulders relax.
Once her breathing settles, she lightly touches the wall, tips the flashlight down to her hand. Her fingers are coated in a fine powder.
Steed examines it. “Reckon it could explain the transfer?”
“It’s possible. Perfect place for stashing gear. Can’t imagine it sees much traffic.”
Curiosity piqued, she keeps moving, reaching the curve in the wall. As they follow the final section, the column of light thrown from her flashlight is teeming with powder—tiny, glimmering particles suspended in the air.
The cave opens up again.
Elin sucks in her breath.
Eyes, staring out from the darkness.
Eyes locked on hers.
52
Blurred, dusty faces stare out at her—five photographs, roughly tacked to the cave wall.
Elin feels gooseflesh rising. Panic surges through her and she slowly breathes out, extending the exhalation as long as she can before sucking in another breath.
Bringing up the flashlight to face height, she hesitantly casts the beam across the images.
It’s clear that they’ve been here awhile; each one covered with a thick film of dust, the heavy-duty tape sticking them to the wall peeling away at the edges.
“What the—” Steed starts, but Elin doesn’t reply, her gaze fixed on the photographs.
Pulling on a pair of gloves, she reaches up a hand, starts gently wiping away the layer of powder on the image on the far left.
Features appear, but they’re pixelated, grainy, as if the photograph has been taken from a distance and then zoomed in. Elin doggedly wipes until the face is revealed—a ponytail, then a wide smile giving a glimpse of crooked teeth.
Her stomach lurches: a photo of a teenage girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen.
Elin moves to the next with a mounting sense of trepidation, because already she knows what these photographs are. These faces are burned into her brain, into the collective consciousness of every person in the area all those years ago.
She’s seen them countless times, countless places, and in countless ways—plastered across newspapers, TV screens, blogs.
“It’s the teenagers that Creacher murdered back in 2003,” she whispers.
A macabre lineup fixed to the cave wall.
These aren’t the images that the newspapers used, though. They’re candid profile shots; one of the teenagers is frowning slightly, obviously unaware it’s being taken.
Another zoomed-in photograph shows one of the boys from the shoulder up, a building Elin recognizes blurred in the background.
Rock House. The school.
“The pictures must have been taken when these kids were on the island. That’s the old school behind them.”
Steed peers in, silent, processing like Elin is.
What does this mean? Why would these images be here?
Face by face, Elin carefully dislodges the powdery residue from the photographs, but on the last one she hasn’t even wiped half of it away before she stops, hand midair.
Her fingers waver.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.” She falters. “This girl . . . I don’t recognize her as one of Creacher’s victims. I thought there were only four.” She remembers how the newspapers displayed the victims’ photographs. Two girls on top, the boys below. There were four; she’s certain of it. “Maybe I’m mistaken, it was a long time ago.”