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“Why do you ask?”
“We have the same eyes. Are you a distant relative to my mother?”
He shook his head. Sadness filled his gaze. “No. But I am related to you, and I will explain everything to you, but let me fix you some food first.”
She nodded and looked out the window. Maui grew smaller and smaller into the distance as Sam puttered around the galley. She prayed that her mother would be safe, that she could lie and tell Joseph that she had been chasing Summer. In her heart, though, Summer knew terrible things would happen.
She just didn’t know how bad it would be and how many of her friends would die.
one
Present Day
“Autumn, are you with me?”
Autumn blinked, her gaze focusing on Jin Phillips, soon-to-be Jin Lee. It took her a moment to bring the present back into focus. Jin smiled at her, her kind expression relaxing Autumn’s nerves. Not that Jin would have picked up on it. Autumn learned at an early age to hide her emotions.
Her boss’s fiancée hostedBeyond Murder, a cold case podcast that went beyond just the nitty gritty most true crime shows talked about. As someone who had been the subject of many true crime shows, Jin understood there was more to every story.
Her interest in Autumn came from a case Task Force Hawaii had all worked on a few months earlier. It was then that she had come to Autumn about recording a podcast about her time at Joyous Wave. Autumn had planned on avoiding the subject, but she knew there was one thing that would bring out Joseph: Autumn spilling all his secrets.
“Sorry, I was woolgathering.”
“No problem. If you aren’t up to talking today, we can handle this another day.”
She shook her head. Autumn was usually better at ignoring the memories, but since Joseph’s minions had popped back up a few months ago and wreaked havoc on the island, she’d been falling back into those wretched memories. It had not surprised her that Joseph was entangled in drug smuggling and murders.
“Let’s talk about your name change.”
Autumn smiled. That was an easy answer. “Rumors were Joseph picked my name.”
“And you didn’t want any connection to him.” Not a question, because Jin researched the people she would interview. “You even went back to your mother’s maiden name.”
“Officially, I was never a Watters. Joseph wasn’t on any of my identification.” She shrugged. “Truth?”
Jin nodded. “Always.”
“I didn’t even have a birth certificate when I ran away from Joyous Wave.”
“You mean on you. Was it destroyed in the explosion?”
“I mean, I didn’t have one. None. Not that I know of. Nothing was ever filed with the state. I was born on the compound, so there was no official record of my birth.”
Jin blinked. “You’re kidding me.”
She shook her head. “I have no idea why the other kids did. But I was the first born there, so that might be why. Anyway, once I escaped, I had the choice of what name to put on my birth certificate.” It had taken her a few weeks to decide, flinching every time someone said her name.
“And you chose another season. Any particular reason?”
“It’s the season Sam Smith met my mother. And since he saved me, I thought it was a great way to honor him and my mother.”
“Your connection to the Smiths, they adopted you?”
“Yes. Although my brother,” she said, using air quotes, “wasn’t thrilled, I totally understood. His mother had just died six months earlier, and here comes this weird girl who didn’t know how to operate a computer, let alone how to function in the real world, taking up his father’s time.”
Another pause from Jin. This is why Autumn rarely talked about Joyous Wave. People were astonished that she had been so backward. “You didn’t know anything about computers?”
The old embarrassment threatened to rise up again, but she forced it back. “Tools of the Devil,according to Joseph. He used them, but he was the leader, right? I think the entire circle—meaning the stupid men—all had access to them.”
