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He had extra batteries, and he wasn’t hungry quite yet, so he decided to wait until later to have dinner. Using his flashlight to be able to see well enough to read, he openedCrime and Punishmentby Fyodor Dostoevsky. He didn’t have much of an education, had barely attended school after his uncle took him in—most people on their tiny island, the ones he’d associated with, anyway, were uneducated and subsisted on very little other than what they could get from fishing or shrimping—so he’d never had much access to learning materials. He’d certainly never read for pleasure.
But while he was in prison, books had become his salvation, and they were still a huge part of his life. He blitzed through almost any book he could find, craved information the way others craved sex, sugar, praise, or money, and visited the library on the island, which had been established way back in the mid-nineteenth century by the son of the whale-oil merchant who’d founded Mariners. In fact, he went there probably more than anyone else and had devoured hundreds of books since he’d arrived.
He used the internet, too, mostly when he needed to know how to build something or make repairs. Bo could move as fast as he liked and study only what interested him, and he was surprised by how important learning had become to a boy without so much as a high school diploma.
His phone signaled a call.
Reluctantly setting his book aside, he checked to make sure it wasn’t his employer or the woman he was supposed to be looking out for during the storm.
It was neither. But his chest constricted when he saw the name. Matilda was calling again. After so long, why was his sister reaching out to him?
He had no answer for that, but just the thought of speaking to her made him feel as though someone had slugged him in the gut. So, once again, he didn’t answer. For the third time in as many months, he silenced his phone and put it down. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep cleansing breath as he struggled to bury the pain even deeper before returning to his book.
Ismay curled her feet underneath her on the couch and opened her laptop. She’d never heard of a string of women going missing—or being murdered—on Mariners. But she lived across the country, where the news could’ve been muted by more local happenings.
She also hadn’t paid much attention to current events while growing up. Since she’d become an adult, she liked watchingDatelineandForensic Fileswhen she had a free minute, which was probably why her mind kept going back to the items in that darn duffel bag. But during the past decade, free minutes had been hard to come by, and she’d never seen an episode that had anything to do with Mariners, other than the case where a twelve-year-old girl went missing in 2000 or 2001, the police couldn’t figure out what had happened to her, and then her body turned up—fairly recently—near the lighthouse.
While sad, that case had never concerned her personally. And it still didn’t. From what she’d heard and read, the police had finally figured out who killed Emily Hutchins and why, and it had nothing to do with Remy or anyone connected to him.
She told herself the duffel and its contents meant nothing. But she had hours to fill while waiting for the storm to blow over, so she found herself searching the internet forunsolved cases on Mariners,missing women on Mariners,rape on Mariners, andmurder on Mariners.
Almost every link went to the Emily Hutchins case.See? You’re assuming far too much.
Except...there had to be a reason, even if it wasn’t the one that first came to mind; those items had been hidden so carefully.
She typed inMariners, underwear.
Nothing came up. Just a bunch of information about Mariners in general—its history, its Nantucket-like architecture, its towering elms, its quaint shops and cobbled streets—and a few ads selling underwear.
She changed her search parameters once again—this time toMariners, stolen underwear.
Still nothing.
If there was a string of terrible crimes that’d happened here, there’d be some news piece written about it. The wealthy people who frequented the island would be outraged.
That meant she shouldn’t be worried. She’d done her research and turned up nothing.
She started to close her laptop. She wanted to be done with this.
Except...she could’ve been putting in the wrong information. Could these items be tied to crimes in New York City instead, where Remy and his brother had grown up?
She winced at her uncertainty. It wascompletelyfar-fetched, way beyond anything Remy would ever consider doing. Of course.
But she had to explore all possibilities. She wouldn’t wreck her life by sticking her head in the sand just because she didn’t want to face a hard truth. What would police say to the wife who found such a duffel bag and did nothing about it? They’d think she had to know what her husband was up to.
Using keywords to bring up cold cases in New York instead of Mariners, Ismay wound up with the opposite problem. There were so many violent crimes it was overwhelming.
To narrow her results, she tightened her parameters to the period when Remy would’ve been living at home, but the list was still too long.
“Unbelievable.” Setting her laptop aside, she went to his room and got the bag, snapped a picture of the girl’s picture she’d found inside it and tried to use Google’s facial recognition feature. If it could tell her the identity of the person in the photograph, she’d be able to use that to guide her search. But it was such a blurry old photo, the effort proved futile.
With a sigh, she checked her phone to see if Remy had tried to reach her since she’d let him know the generator was on. She hadn’t received a response to her text. He could besocaught up in his own goals. There were moments, plenty of them, when she just didn’t feel important to him. He assured her she was misreading him. But maybe that tendency to withdraw, to be so aloof, was why she was alarmed about what she’d found. It could be difficult to feel close to him, to feel as though she really knew him.
Certain she’d feel better if she could just hear his voice, she considered calling him. The storm had put her in a strange frame of mind. It was making her see things in their worst possible light. She couldn’t imagine she’d be spending so much time scouring the internet if she’d found that bag back at their apartment.
Actually, it would be weird even there, she decided, which was why she didn’t call him. What could she say? She certainly wasn’t going to tell him what she’d been doing for the past two hours. And she needed to let him study, or he’d blame her if he failed.
She stared at the old photograph she’d found a little longer. The young subject was attractive, with thick blond hair and maybe brown eyes—it was hard to tell. She also had a gorgeous tan and was standing on the beach in front of Windsor Cottage...
