Shadowlands (Shadowlands (Hyperion)) (19 page)

I sat on the back deck of our house two hours later, facing north, watching as the search party of locals bobbed into view up the beach, the beams of their flashlights weaving and dipping across the ground and sky. I’d been waiting all night to see it in action, and now, here they were, a whole, long line of about two dozen, walking shoulder to shoulder along the sand. The line stretched from the dunes all the way to the water, and they walked slowly, their eyes cast down, scanning the ground beneath their feet with their flashlights. In this way, I supposed, they were ensured they wouldn’t miss a thing. But as I watched as they approached my house, I felt a twist of discomfort deep in my stomach.

Why were their eyes trained on the ground? Were they looking for my sister or searching for a body?

I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. The fog had rolled out as my father and I walked back to the house, and now millions of stars winked merrily overhead, clearly oblivious to the torture I was experiencing under their watch.

Where was Darcy? If Steven Nell truly wasn’t here, then where had she gone? Why had I heard her scream?

Off to my left, I heard raised voices. There was a white tent set up on an outstretch of land between the next two houses, a sort of makeshift headquarters for the search. Floodlights illuminated my father’s face as he argued with the two cops stationed there. One of them was Officer Dorn. The other, I didn’t recognize.

Then, in classic Dad fashion, he snatched the clipboard out of Dorn’s hands and flung it out over the beach, where it flew like a Frisbee for a good one hundred feet before skidding into the sand. He stormed off, and moments later our front door opened and slammed. He joined me out on the deck, and I could hear him laboring to get his breathing under control.

“They still won’t let me join the search,” he said finally, standing next to my chair. “Even though I told them you’d be here. What’s with these people? It’s like they’re some kind of insular clique. Like heaven forbid they let someone from outside the town inside in any way.”

I said nothing. All I could think was that the FBI could be wrong. Steven Nell was brilliant, that’s what Messenger had said. He very well could have led them on a wild-goose chase and come here while they were distracted. He could have Darcy somewhere on this island right at this very moment, and all we were doing was sitting here, waiting for her to come home.

A cold breeze lifted my hair from my neck. I glanced out at the water and froze. Tristan was standing on the beach down below, wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood up to cover his hair, gazing right at me.

“I’m going to go get a sweater,” my father said, rubbing his hand across my back. Still facing the oncoming search party to the north, he hadn’t noticed our lurker. “Do you need anything?”

I looked up at him and forced a smile, just wanting him to go so I could talk to Tristan. “No, Dad. Thanks.”

He looked at me sadly, kissed my forehead, then went. I got up, throwing the blanket off my legs, and raced to the guardrail facing the water, my heart pounding, dozens of questions crowding my brain.

But when I looked down at the sand again, Tristan was gone.

Thorns tore at my ankles. A wet branch whipped my cheek. I fell to my knees, a sharp rock piercing my skin. But it was all nothing. Nothing. Nothing compared with what Steven Nell was going to do to me.

When I tried to get up, my knee buckled and all I could do was crawl. If only I knew where I was. If only I could just see where I was going, but it was so dark. So very, very dark.

Then something caught my eye—something white and smooth looming in the darkness. Whimpering, I leaned forward for a closer look. White fingers with chipped nail polish. Darcy’s hand. Her arm stuck out at an unnatural angle from beneath a holly bush, the sleeve of her cheerleading sweatshirt soaked through with blood. Shaking, I pushed the branches aside. Darcy’s eyes were open, lifeless, the back of her head smashed in.

“Darcy!” I screeched. “No!”

I scuttled backward on my hands. Steven Nell had killed her, and I was next. I opened my mouth to scream again, and a gloved hand clamped over my lips.

“No!”

I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the ceiling of my room. I was still alive, but Darcy… The moment I remembered everything that had happened earlier, I sat up straight and screamed. Someone was sitting in my desk chair, dressed in head-to-toe black. His knees faced my mattress, his hood was up to cover his face, and his posture curled forward as if he was in mourning. As soon as I screamed, he looked up, the hood falling back from his blond hair.

Tristan.

“Shhhh!” he whispered, bringing a finger to his lips.

My chest heaved as I struggled for breath and tried to make sense of what was happening. I looked down and realized I was wearing nothing but a thin tank top with no bra, and I yanked my blanket up to cover my chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “How did you get in here?”

“We need your help,” he replied, ignoring my question. He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on his knees and rubbing his hands together before clasping them. I saw the woven leather bracelet peeking out from the cuff of his sleeve. His blond hair fell forward, grazing his cheekbones as he looked me dead in the eye. “Steven Nell has your sister somewhere on the island.”

“What?” I shrieked, jumping up, still clutching the blanket. My pulse raced so fast I was about to pass out. I brought one hand to my head and tried to focus. “I knew it! I knew—”

I paused and looked down at Tristan. He eyed me with a sort of reluctant expectance. Like he was waiting for me to realize what I was slowly realizing.

“How do you know about Steven Nell?” I asked, trembling. “Did the police tell you? Did they tell Joaquin?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” he said, standing. “I just do.”

I blinked, completely confused. “Chief Grantz said he’d gone to Canada. He said the FBI—”

“Chief Grantz lied,” Tristan said flatly.

“What?” I breathed. “Why?”

He blew out a sigh, looking at the floor as he shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

I paced in front of him, holding my head with one hand. “Okay, okay,” I said, my brain working hard to process all this. “How do you know he’s here? Did he contact you?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“Tristan, you’re giving me nothing here. What’s going on?” I asked, growing more frustrated, more desperate, by the second. “What do you mean, you need my help?”

Tristan moved over to the north-facing window and leaned his elbow against the upper ledge on the lower pane. He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead, as if my questions perturbed him. As if he didn’t know how to answer.

“All I can say is, you’re the only one that can find her,” he said, turning to look at me, his blue eyes pained.

Then he gazed out the window in a way that made my heart skip a beat. He was looking at something or someone down below. My breath short and shallow, I walked over to join him, my long blanket swishing behind me. At first all I saw was the glow, but as I approached the window, the crowd came into focus. There were at least a dozen of them gathered in a close-knit pack in the sand. Each of them wore a hooded sweatshirt, and each carried a black flashlight. I could see Joaquin, Lauren, Krista, Fisher, Bea, and Kevin, plus a few others I’d noticed around town. They were all there, and they were all gazing up at me in grim silence.

“Will you help us?” Tristan asked quietly.

I swallowed hard. My throat was dry, my heart was pounding, and white-hot adrenaline warmed my skin from the inside out. I knew I should go wake my father. I knew I should get him to contact the police. Nothing about this made sense. And there was no way I should be going out with a pack of strangers, a pack of kids, to try to take on a serial killer. But when I looked into Tristan’s eyes, I knew there was only one answer to his question.

“Of course I will,” I said. “She’s my sister.”

The sand was soft and cold beneath my bare feet as Tristan and I made our way across the beach to his hooded friends. Every one of them watched my approach as if I were some kind of prophet. As if I were going to start glowing from within and spout the meaning of life. I held my running shoes to my chest, grasping them in my sweaty palms.

This was really happening. Steven Nell had found us.

“Rory,” Joaquin said in a deep, no-nonsense voice. “What do you know about Steven Nell?”

“Not a lot,” I said. “I thought he was just a regular math teacher until he attacked me in the woods near my house. I’m not actually from Manhattan,” I clarified, remembering how Darcy had filled Joaquin in on our faux history. “I’m from New Jersey.”

No one even blinked.

“Go on,” Tristan said, touching my back briefly.

“Well…it turns out he murdered fourteen girls all across the country, and I was the only one to get away,” I said. Tristan and Krista exchanged a grim look. “The FBI agent who put us into witness protection told us Nell had never failed before, so there was a good chance he’d try to come after us, but that’s all I know. I was hoping they’d caught him, until…”

“Until now,” Tristan finished for me.

“Yeah.” I gulped back a sob and looked down at the sneakers against my chest, knowing how terrified Darcy must be. If she was even still alive. “Until now. Why aren’t the police here?” I asked, looking up again, sniffling back a tear. “Shouldn’t we be talking to them about this? Or at least tell some adults?”

“The adults are useless,” Joaquin said with a scoff. “They’re all in denial.”

“They think it’s impossible for this man to be here,” Krista explained. “They refuse to believe us.”

I glanced at Joaquin, whose jaw was set. Was that what he’d been arguing with Officer Dorn about?

“But you think he’s here?” I said. “Why?”

“Because nothing like this has ever happened before,” Lauren piped in, her voice shrill. “Ever.”

Tristan and Joaquin shot her an admonishing look, and she bowed her head, blushing.

“Nothing like what?” I asked. “Someone going missing? But Grantz said this happens every once in a while. That they always form a search party and…”

My words died on my tongue. Tristan was looking at me like he was waiting for me to catch on already.

“Oh,” I said, my heart turning to stone. “That was a lie, too.”

But why? Why would the police chief lie to me and my father? Was he in on it? Did he know Steven Nell somehow?

“What I don’t get is why he took Darcy,” Joaquin said, clenching a fist in front of his mouth. “If he’s so pissed off he failed, why not just come after you again?”

“Because he’s messing with me,” I said, hugging my shoes even tighter. “He wants to make me pay before he—”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. The crowd shifted on their feet, murmuring, whispering. I looked at Tristan.

“Has he contacted you since you’ve been here?” he asked.

I thought of the note he left on my bed back home in Princeton. “No,” I said.

“Are you sure?” He squared off with me, toe-to-toe, and reached for my right hand. He held it lightly in his own for a second, then squeezed. “Think, Rory. You haven’t received any messages from him of any kind?”

I looked into Tristan’s eyes, and all of a sudden it hit me. It hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. The laughter, the humming, the song on the jukebox. The scrap of fabric, the messenger bag, the lighthouses. Maybe they hadn’t been coincidences. Maybe they hadn’t been taunts or reminders. Maybe they’d been messages.

“‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I breathed.

“What?” Joaquin asked.

“The song. ‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I said, my brain racing as I clutched Tristan’s hand. “It’s his favorite song. I heard someone humming it my first morning here, and then it was on the jukebox at the Thirsty Swan.”

Joaquin looked at Tristan. “‘The Long and Winding Road.’ What could that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Tristan said, still looking into my eyes. “What else, Rory?”

“There was a scrap of fabric that looked like it had been torn from his jacket,” I said. “It had two patches sewn on it. I think they were flags like you see on a sailboat.”

“Can you draw them?” Krista asked, breathless.

“With what?” I asked.

“The sand,” Joaquin suggested, gesturing down.

I tugged my fingers away from Tristan, dropped my shoes, and fell to my knees on the cold beach. The whole pack of locals gathered around me, their hoods shadowing their faces as they pointed their flashlights at a single spot in the sand. Shakily, I managed to draw the two flags.

“This one was blue-and-white checks, and this one was blue, white, and then red in the center,” I said, looking around at them.

“They are signal flags. That one means
N
,” Kevin said, pointing to the checked one. “And the other is
W
.”

“Northwest,” Tristan added.

Another murmur went through the crowd. All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My stomach turned, and I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting on someone’s feet.

“Dryer’s Way,” Lauren said. “That’s a long and winding road.”

“And it ends at the northwest point of the island,” Joaquin added.

I stood up, dusting the sand from my legs. Another wave of nausea hit me, and I instinctively grabbed for Tristan’s arm. I took a breath, cleared my throat, and let him go to stand on my own.

“There was one other thing,” I said. “His messenger bag. He left it hanging on my fence, and it was full of tiny lighthouses.”

Joaquin blinked. “There’s no lighthouse on Juniper Landing.”

I felt my heart start to fall. I’d thought we were getting somewhere.

“There used to be,” Tristan said.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“What do you mean?” Joaquin asked.

“It was situated at the northwest point,” he said, looking startled but resigned. “They took it down because people…visitors…kept getting hurt up there. But the foundation is still there. And so is the lighthouse keeper’s cottage.”

“How did I not know this?” Joaquin asked.

Tristan fiddled with his bracelet. “We never go up there. Unless we’re going to the bridge,” he said, glancing at Krista. All the friends exchanged knowing looks. Clearly, this meant something to them.

“He wanted me to find him,” I said, shaking. “He was planning this all along, and now he has his bait.”

Tristan took a step forward. “But he didn’t plan on all of us coming with you.”

I looked around at them. At Lauren and Krista, Fisher, Bea, and Kevin, all the others whose names I didn’t know. Even Joaquin. All of them were willing to help me—to help Darcy. All of them were willing to risk everything to save her. I didn’t understand why, but I was grateful. Standing in their midst, I felt safe. I felt like it was still possible that everything could be okay.

I glanced over at Tristan hopefully. His eyes were determined but somehow sad.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Joaquin said. “Let’s go get her.”