The Island

We scurry through the park. Without discussion we all pick a direction to watch. I take our right. Harper our left. Liam keeps looking back. Gibson ahead. Reeve kind of everywhere. Ava…at the ground.

Gibson leads us to a park map, and we crouch behind that.

Has he seen something or is this just a rest stop?

“Shhh,” Gibson says, as if anyone was thinking about breaking into song. “We’re almost there. We’ll go in through the back. I have the code for the gate and a key for the door.”

“Go,” Reeve says, pressing on the wound on his head.

He turns and we’re running again. The rain fizzles out and a last gust of wind blows the final cloud out of the way. The sun is slowing, making its way up the horizon as if it’s racing to help us out.

The storm is over.

But not for us.

I feel like we’re coming into the eye of the hurricane. It always gets worse before it gets better, right?

Robert is unlikely to stop unless we make him. How many more people could be killed before that happens?

Gibson stops dead in front of the gate. I look over my shoulder to see if anyone else is around as he punches in a code.

No black hoodies. No masks. We’re safe for now.

We file through the gate and Liam shuts it behind us.

I’m restless until he unlocks the door and we’re inside. Once we’re out of view from the park, I breathe easier. Not by much, but I’ll take it.

Gibson and Liam take a quick sweep of the staff room, bathrooms, kitchen, and dining area. We’re alone.

I look longingly at the pantry and coffeepot.

“We’re alone here,” Gibson says, pushing his way through the revolving door. “We should stay in the kitchen where we can’t be seen.”

“Then we won’t be able to see,” I say as we all follow him. “Wasn’t the whole point of coming here so we can watch outside without anyone seeing us?”

“It’s not light enough yet. Once the sun hits the building, you can’t see in at all,” he replies. “There’s a hatch from the kitchen that we’ll be able to look through, but we can’t risk him knowing where we are. Let’s eat and drink before we play hide-and-seek.”

Liam holds up a loaf of bread. “Sandwiches?”

I can’t believe we’re talking about food right now, but I’m so hungry I could eat that bread plain. The entire loaf. By myself.

“I’ve got sliced ham, cheese, and chicken here,” Reeve says as he raids the large refrigerator. “Pickles and sauces are in the pantry.”

“You know where everything is,” I say, trying to hide the sound of my stomach rumbling. I’ve not eaten since lunch yesterday. Besides a few chips. It’s just one missed meal, really, but it feels like five.

I grab Cokes from the fridge and pass them around while Liam and Gibson make some food. Although I know it’s now morning, it feels like it could be any time of the day. It doesn’t even feel odd that we’re having lunch for breakfast.

Reeve sits on a counter and drains a bottle of water.

We stand around the stainless-steel island to eat a feast of sandwiches and more sandwiches. They must’ve used two loaves. Reeve looks less drained once he’s eaten and had a Coke. The sugar is good for us. It’s woken me up a bit.

Reeve catches me smiling his way. No, no, no. I turn my head and contemplate volunteering to be bait for Robert. My cheeks are on fire. He definitely caught me staring at him. This is just great.

I’m such an idiot.

I finish my sandwich while keeping my gaze on my plate. Looking up is a risk—Reeve must think by now that I have a crush on him. I’m probably not the only person in this room who does, so I shouldn’t feel embarrassed.

Harper and I clear up the plates once everyone is finished. We slide them into the dishwasher and Gibson throws away the trash. We might be running for our lives, but we still have manners.

Reeve and Liam watch outside through the hatch.

The only person who hasn’t done anything to help is Ava. No shock there. I’d be annoyed at the princess thing, but she’s completely shaken up, especially since James was killed.

“What now?” Ava asks, leaning against the counter.

I close the dishwasher. “We wait until it’s lighter out and then we search for the cell jammer. Once we disable that, we can call for help.”

“Why don’t we just stay here until Monday?”

“Because that’s tomorrow. We’re not due back until midday tomorrow, so that means no one would even come for us for another thirty hours. You really want to risk that long with a killer?”

She presses her lips together and scowls as if we’re doing all this just to irritate her.

“Ava, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to leave this kitchen until we’ve called for help and the cops arrive,” Harper says.

“Yeah, no one is expecting you to do anything. The rest of us can do this and you can be on the radio, watching out the window. You’ll be able to see more.”

Her back straightens. “I could be the lookout.”

Her eyes catch fire as she realizes this is how she’s able to help. Before now I didn’t think she even wanted to do anything.

“We’d have an advantage. Finally,” I say.

“Advantage to what?” Reeve asks.

I tell him, Gibson, and Liam about our latest plan and they’re all in agreement. Ava will be the lookout while we scour the island.

Liam shoves some chips in his mouth as we look at a map of the park. He’s not done eating. Gibson and Reeve split the map in half. Reeve will take Harper and Liam, and I will go with Gibson.

We’ll meet back here once we’ve found the jammer and destroyed it.

“Well.” Gibson claps his hands. “Before I try to destroy jammers from murderers, I always have coffee. Who wants?” he says, keeping it light again.

“I’d tell you that was in bad taste, but I actually do need coffee,” I reply.

“I make the best coffee,” Ava says. “Let me.”

Gibson and Reeve share a look of shock that makes me laugh. They didn’t expect Ava to lift a finger either. She seems to be trying now.

“She’s suddenly grown a conscience,” Liam mutters, offering me a chip.

“No thanks.”

“I’m going to look for another radio so we’ve all got one,” Reeve says. “Help me out, Gibson. The staff room is the most likely place, but there’s a storeroom too.”

Right. Our plan only works if we find a way for Ava to be able to contact us. We currently only have two radios.

I sit up on the counter in the far corner. Ava is making coffee and Harper is getting mugs for her.

“Do you believe Reeve’s story?” Liam asks, leaping up onto the counter beside me. He’s waited until Reeve left the room to come talk to me.

My stomach uncoils, and I realize I’ve been waiting for someone to ask that. I can’t help replaying it over and over again. There was only one thud before Reeve stopped talking to us. Wouldn’t there have been two? One when he was hit and the other when he fell to the floor.

Why was he the only one who was attacked and survived? If the killer just wanted the influencers to die, why hit Reeve at all?

He was also arrested and sentenced to time behind bars for violence.

But there is nothing violent about him now. We’ve been pushed to the limit, and he’s been nothing but proactive and protective.

The old Reeve and the new one seem like two completely different people.

“Do you believe him?” Liam presses.

“I want to.”

We’ve become friends, I’d like to think, so I don’t want to believe he would hurt us.

“He wasn’t here when James was killed.” He looks up and I’m not sure who he’s checking for because Reeve is still gone. “And so was Gibson.”

“So were you.”

“All right. Gibson and I were outside, though. Running around on a wild-goose chase looking for what we thought was one of you.”

“It’s just…messy. He would’ve had to get his psycho nighttime glasses from wherever they were hidden in the dark, murder James, and get out.”

“Would he have had time, Paisley?”

“Well…Yeah, he would’ve in theory. It would’ve been tight and no room for error. I’d say unlikely but not impossible. What side of the park did Gibson go off to when you split up?”

He frowns as he tries to remember. “Um, toward the Helter Skelter.” It’s not a convincing tone. “That’s not millions of miles away from the hotel.”

“Right.”

“You didn’t see if he swooped back toward the hotel?”

“Nah. The rain was coming down hard and the wind was crazy. I would’ve gone that way if he’d told me to take that side of the island.”

“He was the one to tell you where to go?”

If he did, he would’ve had control of where two of the other men were. Neutralize the main threat first is rule one in homicide.

“No…Malcolm was.”

There goes that theory.

“Do you think Gibson and Reeve could be working together?” I ask.

“Maybe. What do you know about them? You’ve been friendly with Reeve.”

“They knew each other before working here. Gibson was headhunted for the boat gig, and he got Reeve the job.” I sit straighter. “Do you think he got Reeve the job so they could do this?”

“Kill us? I doubt they even knew who we were then,” Liam says.

“No, but this doesn’t necessarily need to be about us. It’s Malcolm. This is his island, and this weekend is about us endorsing the park. You know how many millions Malcolm has sunk into this place? I don’t know if he’d go broke if it failed, but it couldn’t be good. Yesterday Reeve slipped up when he was talking about Kenna. He used the past tense.”

“Did they know Malcolm before here? If this is linked to him, there has to be something making them that angry,” he says.

His eyes are cautious now. I’ve taken a leap with a theory, and it’s flimsy at best. I have to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself.

“Great question, Liam. I have no clue. If we had cell service, we could check it out. We’re going to have to go old-school to figure that out.”

“Shouldn’t we warn people?”

“How do we do that without alerting Reeve and Gibson?” I ask. Ava’s already accused just about everyone. How could we get her to stay calm and have a conversation without flat-out telling them we think they’re guilty? The last thing we need is to alienate each other. One big group is better than a bunch of smaller ones.

His shoulders sag. “Right. We’re just going to have to make sure no one is alone with them.”

Jeez, I’ve been alone with them both. Why didn’t they just kill me when we were outside? No one would have seen.

Why would Reeve risk going back to jail? He said that Malcolm was the only one to give him a chance, so it’s not like he has a lot of other employment options. Why do this? Something isn’t adding up.

“I’m scared, Liam.”

“Yeah. So am I. But we can do this. You’ve been so calm, Paisley. Please don’t freak out on me now.”

My mom would be going insane right now. She was the first one to tell me to go on this trip. She hoped that meeting beauty, book, game, and movie bloggers would make me ditch the crime and killers.

If I don’t get off this island alive, she will never forgive herself.

Thoughts of home and my family refocus me. I have to get through this so next week I can sit on my sofa with my family and eat pizza on family night. Every Thursday is the same. Board games, cards, or movies and three large pizzas.

I can’t believe I ever thought that was boring. I would give anything to be curled under a blanket between my parents again.

“Paisley.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. This has been said before, but we need a plan.”

“Any ideas?”

“Why am I always the ideas person?”

“You spend your life in this world.”

“It’s hardly the same.”

“Psychos are psychos.”

“Right.” I turn to him. “Hold on. That’s right. So, what does this psycho want to achieve? I think it’s safe to assume that whoever’s doing this is working as a team. Right now, we have Gibson and Reeve, but we shouldn’t get too hung up on that because it doesn’t fit. And Camilla and Robert, who are much stronger suspects due to her reaction and the fact that Robert is hidden in the staff files.”

“Well, the reason this is happening is to ruin Malcolm, right? You said it’s probably all about him.”

“Yeah, but why? You don’t do this just because you’re jealous that he has an amusement park on an island. This is personal. We should find out if he has any enemies.”

“How?”

“By talking to him. He’s borderline narcissistic. We start talking about him, particularly about people doubting or hating him, and he’ll talk. That’s if we can find him.”

That’s if he’s still alive.

Liam clicks his tongue. “You should do that.”

“Why me?”

“I’ll be there, but I don’t want to say the wrong thing. You know this stuff. Give me a gun and put me in the middle of a fight, and I’m up.”

I don’t know what video game he’s talking about, but I do get his point.

This is supposed to be my area of expertise.

Though I think we’re forgetting that I’m a seventeen-year-old high school student who vlogs about murder in her spare time.

From the corner of my eye, I see a flash of black outside through the hatch.

At the same time, Gibson bursts through the door. “There’s someone outside!”

I jolt, doing a double take, and leap down from the counter.

He’s gone now, but I definitely saw him too.

Reeve is right behind Gibson, holding a radio and a bemused look. “Where?”

They’re both gone a second later and we race after them, from the kitchen to the dining area.

“He was walking toward the hotel,” Gibson says.

I see him again just as he’s about to disappear around the corner. Robert.

I tilt my head. In daylight, he seems different. Less scary. Probably because he walked past so he can’t know where we currently are.

Both times, he’s a flash of black and then gone. Like getting a glimpse of a ghost. This person is very real, though.

My stomach sinks to my toes.

“He doesn’t know we’re here,” I say. “Or she.”

We can’t get wrapped up thinking this could only be a man. I need to remind myself of that.

Gibson’s jaw drops, and he points to the empty space the killer just left. “You think that could’ve been a woman?”

I shrug. “There was nothing identifying whoever it was. It was only a second, but they were average height and dressed in dark colors.”

“I’m guessing dude,” Liam says.

“Women count for sixteen percent of serial killers. There’s nothing right now to suggest that the person out there isn’t part of that statistic. We should keep an open mind. Besides, it’s probably a team.”

“This dude-slash-chick is gone now, so let’s get out of here and find that jammer,” Reeve says, handing a radio to Ava. “It’s on the right channel. Sound is on low, but only contact us if we’re about to be stabbed, okay?”

Ava’s eyes bulge, but she takes the radio.

Liam hangs back a few steps as we head to the door. “No need to tell Reeve and Gibson that we suspected them now.”

Knowing Reeve isn’t the killer is a massive relief. I don’t want to think about why, since I’ve only known him for two days.

I nudge his side. “I was thinking the same. Be careful out there.”

“You too. Stay close to Gibson.”

“I really, really intend to.”

Liam flashes me a smile as we leave the restaurant and walk out of the gate.

Gibson clips his radio to his jeans and gives me a nod.

This is it. Time to catch a killer.