“Yet you’re hesitant to think this current set of missing girls ran away.”
“Because I know them,” I say. “They wouldn’t do something like that.”
“And what about the girls who went missing fifteen years ago? You knew them, too.”
“I did.”
“You knew them well enough to get angry at them.”
“One of them.”
I reach for the coffee and take another gulp, this time to steel myself.
“Maybe even violently angry.”
Flynn catches me mid-sip. The coffee stops halfway down my throat, choking me. I let out a series of short, rough coughs. Coffee and spittle fling from my mouth.
“What are you implying?” I say between coughs.
“I’m just being thorough, Miss Davis.”
“Maybe you should start searching for Miranda, Krystal, and Sasha instead. Be thorough with that.”
I take another look out the window. The troopers are still there, milling outside the mess hall. It’s as if they’re guarding the place. Trying to keep someone out.
Or someone in.
A grim understanding settles over me. I now know the reason no one seems to be searching for the girls. Why Detective Flynn keeps focusing on my relationships with all of them. I should have seen it coming. I should have realized it the moment I woke up and Miranda, Sasha, and Krystal were gone.
I’m a suspect.
The only suspect.
“I didn’t touch those girls. Then or now.”
“You have to admit, it’s an awfully big coincidence,” Flynn says. “Fifteen years ago, all the girls from your cabin vanished in the night. All of them but you. Now here we are, with all the girls from your cabin once again vanishing in the night. All of them but you.”
“I was thirteen the first time it happened. What kind of violence do you think a thirteen-year-old girl is capable of?”
“I have a daughter that age,” Flynn says. “You’d be surprised.”
“And what about now?” I say, wincing at both the hysterical pitch of my voice and the headache that accompanies it. “I’m an artist. I’m here to teach girls how to paint. I have absolutely no reason to hurt anyone.”
In my head, a much cooler voice speaks to me. Keep calm, Emma. Think clearly. Go over what you know.
“I’m not the only one who was here back then,” I say. “There are plenty of others.”
Casey, for example, although I doubt she could swat a mosquito let alone hurt two sets of girls for no apparent reason. Then there’s Becca, who definitely had a reason to hate Vivian, Natalie, and Allison.
I think about Theo. About seeing him with Vivian in the shower. About me pounding his chest. Where are they? What did you do to them?
But Theo had a sound alibi fifteen years ago. Franny is a different story entirely. Vivian’s diary slides into my thoughts.
I’m close to finding out her dirty little secret.
I know the truth.
I’m scared.
“I think you should talk to Franny,” I say.
“Why?”
“Vivian—she’s one of the girls who vanished fifteen years ago—was poking around camp. Investigating.”
“Investigating what?” Flynn asks, his impatience more pronounced.
God, I wish I knew. Although Vivian had left behind plenty of clues, there’s nothing to pinpoint what, exactly, Franny might be hiding.
“Something Franny might have wanted to keep secret.”
“Wait, are you saying you think Mrs. Harris-White did something to the girls in your cabin? Not just now, but also fifteen years ago?”
It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it’s the only reason I can think of to explain a situation that defies easy explanation. Everything I’ve learned since coming back to camp points to such a conclusion. Vivian was looking for something, possibly related to Peaceful Valley Asylum. She found it and enlisted the help of Natalie and Allison. All three promptly vanished. That can’t be a coincidence. Now I’m back, looking for what Vivian was after, and Miranda, Krystal, and Sasha also go missing. Again, too strange to be a coincidence.
It’s possible Vivian stumbled upon something Franny was desperate to keep hidden. Perhaps something worth killing over. Now maybe I’m on the verge of finding it out, too, and this is another warning from Franny.
Her story about the falcons shoots into my brain, breaking through all my other cluttered thoughts. Is that why she told it? To make me frightened enough to stop searching? Did she tell Vivian the same story after she’d been caught in the Lodge?
“It makes more sense than thinking I did it,” I say.
“This is a good person you’re talking about.” Flynn puts down his notebook, pulls out a handkerchief, mops his brow. “Hell, she’s the biggest taxpayer in this county. All this land? That’s a lot of property taxes she pays each year. Yet she’s never complained. Never tried to pay less. In fact, she gives just as much to charity. The main hospital in the county? Guess whose name is on the damn building?”
“All I know is that it wasn’t me,” I say. “It was never me.”
“So you say. But no one knows what happened. We only have your word, which, if you’ll excuse me, seems kind of suspect.”
“Something strange is going on here.”
The detective shoves the handkerchief back in his pocket and gives me an expectant look. “Would you care to elaborate?”
I’d been hoping it wouldn’t reach this point. That Detective Flynn would accept my word as fact and start trying to find out what really happened to Miranda, Krystal, and Sasha. But now there’s no choice. I have to tell him everything. Because maybe everything that happened—the shower, the birds, the person at the window—wasn’t directed at me. Maybe it was meant for one of the girls.
“Someone’s been watching me all week,” I say. “I was spied on in the shower. Someone put birds in the cabin.”
“Birds?” Flynn says, once again reaching for his notebook.
“Crows. Three of them. One morning, I woke up and saw someone standing at the window. They’d vandalized the outside of the cabin.”
“When was this?”
“Two days ago.”
“What was the vandalism?”
“Someone had painted the door.” I hesitate before saying the rest. “They wrote the word liar.”