The face did not move or change expression and she realized in seconds that the object that had startled her was inanimate—the mask on the tree that Whitney had pointed out the previous morning. It was now no matter for light amusement.
As she stood staring at it, heart thumping, she gasped again and whirled at a rustle in the brush beside her as some small animal scurried away in the dark, probably as startled as she was.
Turning, she started on along the trail, shivering as the surge of adrenaline left her system. Beneath her jacket she wore only the large T-shirt she had slept in, and now she wished it were a sweater. It was cold and damp as well as dark and the trail seemed more uneven in the night.
Passing the hole that fell deeply away at one side of the track, she stepped carefully around it and continued until the trail turned right on its way up to the rocky point where they had watched the eagle fishing. Just past the turn she sat down on the huge twisted trunk of a fallen tree, switched off the light, and allowed herself time to rest and think. There was a corpse under a tarp not far away and she had no intention of joining his chill indifference to the night if she could help it.
There were stars twinkling through the branches of the trees, but they wouldn’t last long. It would be morning, with its revealing light, in—how many hours? She assumed it must be two or three o’clock, but had left her watch back in the bedroom with the rest of her things. Was there anywhere on the island she could hide well enough to avoid being found when it grew light?
Five Finger was a very small island. Curt knew how many people were in the work crew and would know that one member of the group was missing, and who. As soon as the sun came up, if not sooner, he would likely be after her, searching the three acres carefully from end to end. So it would be wise to proceed with that in mind, wouldn’t it?
Where was the rest of the crew? Had he taken them all to the basement—killed them? Why? Did it have anything to do with the cocaine she and Jim had examined on the cooler room floor? Then there was that person he was talking to on the cell phone. Who was it? Could Karen’s disappearance mean she was involved, or had he “taken care of” her with the rest? If not, where was she?
Had anyone else escaped? Aaron? If they weren’t dead, could she be of any help to the ones that had not? All she had were questions—too many questions and very few answers. How could she find out what was going on and who was responsible without revealing herself as most likely the only wild card in the deck?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT SEEMED VERY STILL AS JESSIE SAT ON THE LOG AND wondered what to do next, but not being able to see in the dark seemed to sharpen her sense of hearing. She became aware of the light breeze sighing softly through the trees behind her. It set the grasses whispering together between her and the rocks where the fossils lay and those that Karen had climbed to see the sea lion and found a dead man instead. She could also hear the receding tide as it washed at the island’s pebbly shingle and remembered how that morning it had tirelessly swept away blood that stained the water with scarlet threads. Now as it came and went it tumbled loose stones that, partially submerged, knocked against each other with an almost musical sound.
Slumping a little on the log, she sighed, trying to relax and let go some of the stress that had built through her escape.
The breeze momentarily held its breath, but the rhythmic sea continued to create the pleasant harmony of stones that was almost a voice. Within that sound, her ears suddenly caught another rhythm that had nothing to do with stones or water. Very faint and from not far away there was a human note in the music. Someone just within hearing distance was very quietly sobbing.
Jessie was instantly on her feet, poised and concentrating on what she had heard. The sound faded, stopped, and then softly returned between where she stood and the verge of the tide.
Leaving her daypack behind the log on which she had been sitting, she crept forward, holding the flashlight covered with her fingers except for one narrow beam aimed on the ground at her feet. This was no time to stumble or give her presence away. Slowly, carefully, she passed through the grasses, moving only when the breeze sighed through them, hesitating when it hesitated.
When she was beyond them and could look out over the rocks that angled gently down into the tide, she froze and stood waiting, listening. The sobbing had ceased, but a rock clacked against another rock as someone moved to her left. Whoever it was had to be close to where they had left the dead man wrapped in his shroud of blue plastic.
With no further attempt at silence, Jessie stepped quickly forward over the ridge of stone and aimed the full beam of her flashlight toward the enclosed body. It was no longer completely draped with blue weighted with stones. The face and upper half of the body lay exposed to the night, cold and silent. Kneeling beside it, tears streaming down her face as she turned blindly into the light, was Karen Emerson.
As if she were frozen, she stared into the light in Jessie’s hand without moving, startled, but clearly not caring, or perhaps resigned to whoever was holding it.
“What are you doing
here,
Karen?” Jessie demanded.
The woman looked down at the man by her side, but said nothing, just shook her head and wiped at her face with one hand.
Lowering the beam of light from Karen’s face, Jessie stepped forward to stand beside her.
“What’s
this
about? Do you know this man?”
Karen reached out to lay a hand protectively on the shoulder of the dead man.
“He was my friend,” she said simply. “He helped me when I needed help.”
“Why didn’t you say you knew him when we found him?” Before she stood up to answer, Karen pulled the blue tarp back up to cover the body and carefully replaced the stones that held it in place. Facing Jessie, she frowned and took her lower lip between her teeth in a long moment of assessment. There was a note of bitterness when she finally spoke.
“You’re the one who said his name.
Tim
. But you didn’t say his last name, so I wasn’t sure it was the Tim I knew until I came back here to see for myself after you had all gone to sleep. It could have been someone else with the same first name, but it wasn’t. It
is
my friend. What I want to know is how
you
could have known him.”
The accusation was tossed like a gauntlet that lay in the space between them, concerning something Jessie didn’t understand.
“If you knew him,” she said slowly, thinking back, “why didn’t you recognize him on the plane from Juneau when he was sitting in the seat next to you?”
“What?”
“It was a short flight, but he was right beside you, sleeping.”
But as she spoke she remembered how the hungover fisherman had used the long bill of his cap to cover his face and gone to sleep before Karen came aboard the plane. Then, when they had landed, before she had nudged him awake as promised, Karen had been on her feet in the aisle, so intent on getting off quickly that she had crowded in front of other passengers, never glancing back. She attempted to explain this only to be met with disdain and disbelief.
“He couldn’t have been there. If he had been I
would
have recognized my own
friend
.”
“Well, he was. And you clearly didn’t.”
They stood staring at each other in the half-light of the flashlight Jessie now held pointed at the ground—both defensive, both unwilling to provide a way out of the impasse.
Jessie suddenly realized they had been talking in normal voices that would carry in the stillness of the night. Anyone searching might hear them or see the glow of the light in her hand. Abruptly, she switched it off and lowered her voice almost to a whisper.
“Hush! There’s something happening that I don’t like back at the lighthouse and we really don’t want to be heard talking. How long have you been out here?” she asked.
“Why do you care?” Karen hissed back.
“Did you see anyone when you came?”
“Why would I?”
Impatient with Karen’s belligerence, Jessie gave up, reached out to grip the woman’s shoulder and give her a shake.
“Stop answering a question with a question. There are some nasty things going on—or do you already know that? Are you part of whatever’s going on with somebody on a cell phone? Did you know someone else would show up here before we came?”
“No.”
She shook her head, a motion Jessie found unconvincing, noticing the glance of fearful assessment Karen included with it.
“What are you talking about?” the woman demanded, a familiar note of dread in her voice.
“Curt’s got at least one of the cell phones—or one of his own. I overheard part of a conversation he was having with someone, probably off-island. Do you know who?”
Karen’s body stiffened under her hand, but all the censure and hostility had fled her voice to let fear flood into a moan. “Oh my God. It’s Joe. He’s coming here and he’ll find me.”
As in the hotel room two days before, she went immediately into flight mode, pulling away and turning in confusion and panic, trying to settle on a direction in which to escape.
“Wait.
Wait!
” Jessie snapped just loud enough to be heard as she grabbed Karen’s arm. “Think first, run after. Remember?”
Stones at the edge of the sand stopped rattling under Karen’s feet as she was forced to stand still.
Seldom that Jessie recalled had she been confronted with anyone who made such a problem of herself at every turn. Exasperated, she heartily wished she had never had dinner with the woman to begin with—even more that she had kept her mouth shut and not invited her along to Five Finger Island. But she was not so much a concern as a complication to Jessie at the moment. What to do with her was the question. Left to her own devices she was likely, one way or another, to betray either or both of them to Curt.
The tempting thought of tying Karen up somehow and hiding her in the brush flitted through her mind, but not seriously, for she had nothing with which to tie her and short of knocking her on the head with a rock there was no way to keep her quiet enough even if she had.
“Look,” Jessie told her. “They know who we are and how many of us are here. Soon they’ll come hunting. Hiding is better, and quieter, than running. So we’ve got to find somewhere to hide and there can’t be many good places for one of us, let alone two, on an island this small. You got any ideas?”
Karen shook her head mutely, but she had stopped trying to pull away and seemed to be listening, though still panicked.
Jessie glanced around at the dark shapes of the stones and the trees beyond.
Not here,
she thought. It was too open.
But he wouldn’t look in the
open,
would he? If he came—and she knew that if Karen was right and her stalker was involved, for whatever reason, he
would
come—he would focus his most intensive search in more promising places, those with concealment potential.
Looking down at the body at their feet, she asked Karen, “Are you afraid to stay with this dead guy?”
“Stay?”
Karen asked in a horrified whisper. “Joe’ll see me in a second here next to him.”
“But are you
afraid
of the dead guy?” Jessie insisted.
“Of course not. He can’t hurt me, but Joe
can
. Let’s go hide in the trees.”
“Not just yet. Let me think a minute. This may be the safest place on the island for you right now.”
When Jessie departed there was nothing at all to reveal Karen’s presence, or hers. Their new tracks in the sand didn’t hold prints, or matter, for the work crew had left plenty of footprints earlier in moving the body to its current resting place, and theirs only added to the churned-up appearance. Assured that Karen would stay completely still and quiet in the space they had scooped out in the sand, tossing excess sand into the water, Jessie slipped away and left her hidden beneath the tarpwrapped corpse, once again covered with blue plastic that had been carefully secured with extra stones to hold its edges.
“I can’t leave you the light,” she had whispered to Karen. “It’s the only one I have and I need it.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find another hiding place. Then I’m going back as close as I can to the lighthouse without being seen. Maybe I can find out something about all this and what they’ve done with the rest of the work crew. I’ll come back, unless I get caught or have to stay hidden. If you hear anyone be very still. If it’s me, I’ll let you know.”
Karen agreed and in seconds Jessie had gone, a shadow to join the other shadows of the night.
She had been surprised by Karen’s acceptance of her hiding place, expecting the very idea to give her the shudders after her alarmed display that afternoon upon finding the body. But there had been none of it. She had been oddly acquiescent in helping to move the dead man in his plastic shroud and to hollow out a space just large enough for her to lie down in. In clothing warmer than what Jessie had on, she had laid herself down and allowed the tarp with Tim’s body to be dragged over her. None of the hostility of the afternoon had been in evidence—no resistance offered. It could be a result of her fear, but she had been so compliant that Jessie found herself wondering why and if it would last, or if Karen would be out and gone at first opportunity. If she did slip out, she would be on her own, for there were more important things to be concerned about. As she walked, Jessie resolved to expend no more time or energy in Karen’s direction for the time being, if at all.