Her eyes catch the furrows of sand behind, blurred echoes of footprints.
The blood is pounding out in her ears as she assesses; Farrah was attacked here, then dragged under the overhang.
Stepping forward, Elin ducks her head—a semicrouch until she’s under the rocky lip.
The first thing to hit her is the smell—not just the saline dampness, the mustiness of undisturbed sand, but the metallic tang of blood.
Strong enough to overpower all the other odors.
The small space is throbbing with a blisteringly violent energy, a siren call telling her: Something terrible has happened here.
A rolling wave of nausea hits, but Elin forces herself to look at Farrah: fair hair, bloodstained creases of her white shirt.
Desperate, she looks for any movement, any signs of life. Despite the blood and the body’s position, Elin is still holding on to a thread of hope that Farrah might still be alive.
She circles the body until she can see her face.
It’s not Farrah.
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.
74
Sorry, Elin, no more levers I can pull, I’ve tried. Fire and rescue are still in the process of evacuating, but they’re nearly there. A few hours, I’m hoping.”
“But Farrah’s still missing.” Elin hears the desperation in her voice. Things have changed. Surely Anna understands that. “We need more resources, to search.” Her gaze moves to the window. The glass walls opposite are streaming with rainwater, the movement blurring with the shapes of the staff around her, distributing a makeshift dinner of sandwiches and fruit.