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Again, she didn’t answer. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. It was an hour later on Mariners. But she’d asked him a question...
Remy was calling again after not leaving a voice mail, so Bo decided he’d better see what was going on.
Because Uncle Chester and Matilda were sleeping, he got off the couch, where he’d made himself a bed for the night, and stepped out via the screen door before hurrying down the stairs to the path he knew so well from his childhood. It led to the water, which was exactly where he wanted to go. Then he wouldn’t disturb his family. Nor would they be able to eavesdrop. “’Lo?”
“Bo? It’s Remy.”
He could hear the gentle lapping of the waves against the shore, see the thin smile of a half-moon overhead and the water far out on the horizon lined with silver. “I know.”
“I have to admit, I’m shocked. I had no idea who you really were.”
Bo stopped walking. Apparently, the day he’d both feared and dreaded had arrived. After finally establishing some stability in a place he enjoyed, without too much fear that his past would catch up to him, he was coming face-to-face with the truth he’d been trying so hard to hide. “How’d you find out?” he asked.
“You’re not going to play dumb? Deny it?”
“I’m assuming you have it on good authority.”
“I do. Bastian came across that wallet you hid between the mattresses, Beau Landry.”
“I don’t suppose it’ll do any good to say that Bastian had no business snooping around in my things...”
“You can complain about that to the police, if you want,” Remy said. “But if I were you, I’d stay away from them.”
Bo turned to face the water. “Why? I’ve served my time. I’m not even on probation. And I plan to speak with the cops, anyway, when I tell them about the duffel bag I found hidden in the wall of your old closet.” It was a lie—Ismay had found the duffel bag, not him. But he preferred to leave her out of this, if he could. He didn’t want to give Remy a reason to target her. And now he had nothing to lose.
“What are you talking about?” Remy sounded leery.
“You’re going to pretend you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember any duffel bag,” he insisted.
“You’d remember this one,” Bo said. “It was filled with women’s underwear, some cheap jewelry, and a picture of Lyssa Helberg.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he exploded. “You have no idea what happened that night. I don’t know anything about a bag of panties.”
“Really? Because it was right there by your notebook. Nice sketches, by the way—if you have violent, twisted fantasies that would turn a decent person’s stomach.”
“You couldn’t even guess what I fantasize about.”
“The contents of that duffel bag would give anyone a pretty good indication,” Bo said.
“That duffel bag—and what’s in it—must belong to Bastian. It’s not mine.”
“Oh, of course. He just hid it in your room.”
“You’re fired, you know that?” Remy shouted. “Bastian will box up your shit and send it. Don’t ever set foot on Mariners again.”
Bo gripped his phone tighter. “You think you own the whole island?”
“I might as well. You’ll be sorry if you come back,” he said and disconnected.
Bo sighed as he stared off into the distance. No wonder Ismay was no longer responding to him.
What the hell was he going to do now?
Jack never thought he’d be the one doing the comforting, but when he woke up the next morning, Ismay was still on the couch in her clothes, with nothing but a lap blanket to cover her and balled up tissue all over the floor. When he gave her shoulder a gentle shake, and she opened her eyes, he could see tear tracks on her cheeks, and she immediately broke down again when he asked her what was wrong. Because she was trying to stop from crying and was then crying too hard to answer him, all he could do was put his arm around her to console her. And when she finally calmed down enough to tell him what’d happened, he couldn’t believe it.
“Thatcan’tbe true,” he said. “I feel like I know the kind of man Bo is. He’s not a murderer.”
