In the lobby, the tearful blond lady was standing by the sofa, looking lost. As soon as she saw us, she slipped out of the room.
“Who’s La Llorona?” I asked Alex.
He stared at me blankly.
“That lady,” I said. “She looks like the weeping ghost in the legend…the one who drowned her kids.”
Alex looked like he was about to cry himself. “She drowned her kids? I got a guest who drowned her kids?”
“Never mind.”
We got to the front door and I made the mistake of opening it. That’s when I realized we were going to die before we ever reached the radio.
The lighthouse door was only fifty feet from the hotel entrance, but it might as well have been a mile. The air was a blender of sand and rain and swirling flotsam—oyster shells and chunks of wood that looked suspiciously like planks from the island’s boat dock.
I swung back to Alex and yelled “Forget it!” but he must’ve thought I said something else because he forged ahead into the storm. Like a fool, I decided I’d better follow.
We skittered around like a silent movie comedy, my feet slipping on the wet path. I should’ve fallen several times, but the wind kept pushing me upright and propelling me forward, like I was being shoved through a mob of linebackers. Sand needled my exposed skin, but by some miracle I didn’t get smashed by anything larger.
Alex shouldered open the lighthouse door. We collapsed inside, soaking wet, and Alex forced the door shut.
“Christ,” he gasped. “Feel like I just ran a marathon.”
He rummaged through his coat pockets, found a flashlight and clicked it on.
His face, already cut up and bruised, was now plastered with wet cordgrass. He had twigs sticking out of his curly hair. He looked like a scarecrow that had just gotten mugged. I doubted I looked much better.
Alex swept his flashlight around the room. We were at the bottom of a hexagonal well of unpainted limestone. Just as I remembered, metal stairs spiraled around the walls toward the lantern gallery far above. I’d only been inside the tower once before. My memories of the place were not good.
Here, the roar of the storm was muted, but there was another sound—a grinding in the walls, as if the limestone blocks were moving.
I reminded myself that the tower had stood for over a century. No way would it pick this moment to collapse. The chances were better of getting struck by lightning.
Thunder boomed outside.
Okay. Bad comparison.
“Where’s the radio?” I asked Alex.
He pointed to the platform seven stories above us.
Great.
I knew the beacon hadn’t worked in decades. I wasn’t sure why Alex would keep the radio up there, but I didn’t ask.
We began to climb.
The first time I’d ventured inside this lighthouse, I’d been trespassing.
I was twelve years old and running from my dad.
I thought I’d escape to the northern end of the island. That’s where I usually went to be alone. But as I passed the lighthouse, I remembered my dad’s stern warning that the place was much too dangerous. I should never go in there.
What angry twelve-year-old boy could resist a challenge like that?
I ran to the door and was surprised that it creaked open easily. Inside, the air was cool and damp. I shut the door and put my back against it.
I tried to steady my breathing. I wanted to forget the scene I’d just witnessed in our hotel room. I probably would’ve started sobbing, but a faint noise from above made me freeze.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape, like an animal clawing at wood—a large animal.
At the top of the stairs, in a crescent of daylight, a shadow rippled, as if someone or something was up there.
My instincts told me to leave, but then I heard my father’s voice outside.
“Tres!” he yelled. “Come on, now. I’m sorry, goddamn it! Where are you?”
He sounded as if he was coming toward the door. I decided to take my chances with the giant animal upstairs.
I took the metal steps as quietly as I could, but my own heartbeat sounded like a bass drum. The limestone blocks were carved with graffiti. One said, W. Dawes, 1898.
I smelled sweet, acrid smoke and the scent of fresh-cut wood. I didn’t realize the scratching sounds had stopped until I reached the top of the stairs and found a knife pointed at my nose.
A seventeen-year-old Alex Huff glared at me. “What the hell are you doing here, runt?”
I was too scared to speak. I was already terrified of Alex, a delinquent who hung out with Garrett every time we came to Rebel Island. I knew that Alex lived on the island. He made amazing fireworks displays every Fourth of July. I was vaguely aware that his dad worked for the owner, though I’d rarely seen his dad. I knew Alex hated me for some inexplicable reason, and Garrett treated me worse whenever Alex was around.
Behind him, the floor of the lantern gallery was covered in wood shavings. There was a two-foot-tall figurine standing on a stool, a half-carved woman. A hand-rolled cigarette was smoldering in an ashtray on the windowsill.
“You’re smoking pot,” I said stupidly.
Alex sneered. “Yeah, and if you tell anyone, I’ll gut you. Now what are you—” He tensed as if he’d heard something.
Somewhere below us, outside the tower, my father’s voice, heavy with anger and remorse, rang out: “Tres! Tres, goddamn it!”
Alex and I waited, still as death. My father called again, but this time he sounded farther away.
Alex locked eyes with me. “You’re hiding from him?”
I nodded. I was determined not to let Alex see me cry.
Alex didn’t speak for a full minute. He studied me, as if deciding how to kill me.
“You can’t hide on this island, runt.” He said it bitterly. “Come on. The boathouse is out back.”
“Where are we going?” The last time Alex and Garrett had taken me out on a boat, Alex had threatened to pour cement in my shoes and drop me overboard.
But for once, Alex’s expression didn’t look mean. His eyes were filled with something else—pity, perhaps?
“We’re going fishing,” he said, as if fishing were something grim, possibly fatal. “Trust me.”
Now, twenty-five years later, Alex and I climbed back up those steps together. The tower groaned in the storm. In the yellow beam of Alex’s flashlight, the limestone walls glistened with moisture.
At last we reached the lantern room—a circular platform surrounding the huge golden chrysalis that was the Fresnel lens. There were no wood shavings on the floor this time, nothing but a couple of crushed beer cans. The gallery’s outer walls were storm-proof glass, but I could see nothing through them. With the rain slamming against them, they looked more like marble.
The radio sat on the table in front of us.
I knew almost nothing about shortwave radios, but I did know how to tell when one had been smashed to pieces. This one had been.
I started to say, “Don’t touch—”
But Alex picked up the ball-peen hammer. “How…what the hell—”
“Who else knew about this radio, Alex?”
“Nobody! I mean, just me and the staff.”
I thought about that. I thought about fingerprints. Whoever had shattered the radio had left the hammer behind, which meant he was either sloppy and rushed or unconcerned about being identified. Either way, I didn’t like it.
“Alex, when Longoria arrived on the island, did he come alone?”
“I—I don’t know. I told you, Chris checked him in.”
“It’s your hotel. A small hotel. But you don’t know?”
Alex stared at the window. Outside the storm was a blur of gray and black, like ink coming to a boil. “Look…Longoria wanted a first-floor room, away from the other guests. He wanted a private exit. That’s what Chris said.”
“There were handcuffs on the bed.”
“Tres—”
“Longoria was a U.S. Marshal. Was he, by chance, transporting a fugitive?”
Alex stared miserably at the radio. It was hard to believe he was the same person I used to be afraid of as a kid—the same Alex Huff who had pointed a knife at my face.
“Longoria came in late last night,” he said. “A charter boat brought him in from Rockport. Chris arranged it. I had nothing to do with it.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t see him come in. I don’t know if he was alone, Tres. I didn’t want to know.”
Lightning gilded the windows silver. The whole tower seemed to sway beneath me.
“We need to find Chris,” I said. “We’ll talk in the parlor.”
“You’re not going to tell the other guests?” Alex looked horrified.
“That we might be stuck on this island with a fugitive who just murdered a U.S. Marshal? Yeah, Alex, I kind of think they need to know that.”
6
To get away from the old man, Chase pulled his friends into an unused bedroom.
“Well?” he said. “What the hell do we do now?”
Markie rubbed his chin. He was a big guy, usually good in bad situations, but even he looked shaken. “That was a cop. Did you know he was a cop?”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Ty’s face was pasty. He seemed to be having trouble swallowing.
“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Chase told him.
“Listen to the storm, man,” Ty insisted. “There’s no way we can do this.”
“We will,” Chase said. “We’ve got no choice.”
Markie and Ty said nothing. They knew damn well he was right.
Chase had done his best to pretend the murder didn’t bother him. It was critical that the other guests believe the three of them were just stupid college guys. But he couldn’t shake the image of the bullet hole in the marshal’s chest. He couldn’t help thinking it was a warning. If this weekend didn’t go right, he could end up just like that.
He studied Markie’s face, trying to gauge his loyalty. They’d been friends, if you could call it that, for almost three years now. But what they would have to do this weekend…things like that could strain loyalties, make business relationships unravel. Chase would have to watch his back. And Ty—shit, the guy was a basket case. Chase shouldn’t have brought him along, but he didn’t trust Ty to stay quiet otherwise. He wanted the bastard where he could keep an eye on him.
Chase had worked his way up from nothing. He’d gotten himself into college. He supported his whole fucking family back home. He’d learned how to make a lot of money and deal with hard people. He wasn’t going to let anyone mess up his plans.
“All right, look,” he said, trying to sound calm. “It’s got to happen tonight. I don’t give a crap about the storm. We’ve got no choice.”
Markie looked like he wanted to say something, but then changed his mind. He nodded.
“Come on, Chase,” Ty pleaded. “You know I can’t—I can’t stand this much longer. You know how I get.”
“You’re gonna stand it.” Chase pointed a finger at Ty’s face like the barrel of a gun. “You’re gonna help us. Or you’re gonna end up like the cop in there.”