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To my horror, up ahead, Morty leapt off the bank and disappeared with a splash.
“Where’d he go?” Ben asked as we ground to a stop at the river bank.
The brown river swelled with debris from the past few nights of rain. It dragged branches downstream at high speeds and swallowed fallen leaves completely.
Morty’s head bobbed above the surface and he took a harsh breath in as the police joined us on the bank.
He swam for the other side, but the current dragged him further down the river.
“He won’t make it,” I said.
Almost as soon as I’d finished my sentence, Morty grabbed hold of a fallen tree and inched his way up it to the muddy bank.
I swallowed. Should I have turned into a mermaid to get the jump on Morty? I squashed that thought down the moment it surfaced.
Catching Morty was important, but I couldn’t out my secret off the fly like that. Besides, it would be in all the papers if I caught a murderer while half-naked.
Ben swore and waded in after Morty.
“Don’t be an idiot.” I whacked his arm. Morty had been lucky enough, but I wouldn’t let Ben roll the dice like that. “Did you forget about the bridge?”
Morty clearly had, because the second he was free of the water, he ran down the river in its direction. Bad move, city boy.
“Ugh.” Ben’s footsteps squelched behind me as I took the lead.
Served him right for being so impulsive.
As we ran along the river, Morty veered off further into the trees. I squinted as I watched him. He appeared to be emptying his pockets, but of what?
“Are you okay?” I asked as we darted across the bridge.
Ben’s breathing had become laboured and yet more blood stained his shirt.
“I’m fine. Keep going,” he said.
I didn’t believe him. But I believed that whatever he suffered at that point was worth getting justice for Tyler.
Morty’s wheezes drowned out the dying sounds of the river as we drew nearer to him, still throwing things out of his pockets into the woods.
They looked like little hessian bags. Potion ingredients? Maybe he wanted to ditch the evidence of him having poisoned Michaela this whole time.
The sea popped into view between the trees, and the moonlight became brighter as the trees thinned. We were nearly at the edge of the island.
Ben suddenly sped past me and seized Morty by the coat and yanked him backward, slamming him against a tree only a handful of yards from the cliff’s edge. As soon as Morty’s back hit the wood, Ben punched him clean across the jaw.
I stopped at Ben’s back and put a hand on his shoulder. Morty deserved more than that, but I didn’t know how much Mallory would let Ben get away with, even under these circumstances.
“Why did you do it?” Ben shouted. “Why did you kill Tyler?”
“How did you do it?” I asked. “You said you only came back to Dusk after you heard Tyler died.”
Michaela and George had been in the room when he announced that little fact. If he had lied, they surely would have mentioned it.
“I’d been here for months before I came to stay with George. There are things going on here I don’t want him knowing nothin’ about.” Morty spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. “And the boy found out. He found out too much.”
“That you were poisoning Michaela?” I asked.
“He knew about that?” Morty looked from me to Ben before a bloody grin spread across his face. “Boy was more on the ball than I gave him credit for.”
