Everyone in the room was looking increasingly alarmed, and that gave me a rush of confidence. After the day I’d had, the sensation felt so foreign it caught me unawares. I’d thought this through, examined Camilla’s guests like slabs of hooked meat, and searched every part of them for signs of rot. I had finally reached a conclusion. It felt good. No, it felt great.
“That takes us to Ned.” At the sound of his name, Ned recoiled. “Ned also makes an excellent suspect—don’t you think, Wellington?”
“Uh, yeah, excellent,” Tim said, trying to play along.
“And Ned had motive, too—just not the one you submitted to us, Miles. Jasper stood in the way of something Ned wanted. When he heard the rumor about the engagement from Jade, and realized it was Abby who saw him in the shed with Bebe, he knew he was about to lose his chance. Last night, Ned went upstairs to profess his love to Abella. But Jasper’s body was already gone.”
Bebe emitted a squeak of surprise, though I couldn’t tell if she was reacting to the news about Ned and Abby or her brother. To his credit, Tim didn’t say a word as I let the man who’d just threatened to shoot me off the hook. “Ned was able to identify the shape of the bloodstain,” I said for my colleague’s benefit, “in a crime scene he never set eyes on this morning. Ned’s not our guy.”
“You saw blood on my brother’s bed last night,” Flynn said to Ned, “and you walked away?” I didn’t like the look in his eyes, his supreme state of calm. “You were in love?” Flynn went on. “With that dead little bitch?”
All the talk of Abella had sent Ned into a stupor, and I wondered if Flynn’s words registered. Ned’s apathy enraged Flynn even more. Flynn’s motions were swift and decisive. One—grab the candlestick from the mantel. Two—lunge. Three—bring the object down on the side of Ned’s head. It smacked flesh and bone with a sickening thud and Ned’s tall, lean body crumpled to the floor.
Before anyone could blink, Tim had Flynn facedown on the rug next to Ned. From under his heavy brow Flynn stared in horror at what he’d done. His hair was wild and his mustache dripped with sweat or tears, I didn’t know which. Blood, so thick it was almost black, pulsed from Ned’s head.
It was the first time I found myself in close proximity to Jade’s screams, and I thought my eardrums might explode. Miles pulled her up and ushered her to the door, near where Norton sat. “Nobody move!” I shouted as Bebe, too, struggled to distance herself from Ned’s motionless body. “Stay where you are!”
“Oh my God,” Jade managed through her sobs. “Oh my God, is he dead?”
“Shoot him!” Miles roared, pointing at Flynn. “That man is an animal!”
I dropped to my knees next to Ned and saw that his eyes had rolled back in his head. I found his pulse with two fingers on his neck, thought, Thank you, Jesus, and took a closer look at his wound. “Bebe. Grab those napkins and put pressure on this. Hurry.” I didn’t like how much the cut was bleeding or the slack, gray look of Ned’s skin.
In her too-tight skirt, Bebe knelt awkwardly beside me and pressed the cloth against Ned’s wound. Tim fastened his cuffs around Flynn’s thick wrists and ground his knee into the man’s back. All the while I was acutely aware of the location of every person in that room. It didn’t surprise me when I glanced up and saw Miles’s expression change. I turned my head just in time to see Norton run for the door.
It was what I was counting on.
What I didn’t expect was that he’d take Jade with him.
THIRTY-ONE
The terrain on the west side of the island was rough and steep, but I heard their feet crushing wet twigs down below, so I knew I was on the right course. They were both in their house shoes, while my boots at least had a suggestion of grip. If they made it to the river without fracturing a bone, I thought, they’d be lucky.
I hadn’t considered Norton’s familiarity with the island. While I took the cliff at an angle, picking my way down with only my flashlight to keep me from wrenching an ankle, his movements were nimble and unfaltering, and the path he forged helped Jade to keep pace. They circumvented deadly outcroppings and evaded near-invisible hollows with ease. Twenty years of caring for Tern gave Philip Norton an edge. Camilla may have owned the island, but nobody understood it like he did. Every patch of moss and goose nest, where to find the best views of the river . . . Norton knew it all. This place was his home, and by the time I was halfway down the bluff, I couldn’t hear them at all.
People kill out of jealousy, fear, and hate. They kill because they want what someone else has. More than anything, though, what drove Norton’s actions was love. His love for Tern Island.
I can’t say exactly when I realized he was covering up Jasper’s murder. There were many moments when I thought, I wonder. As keeper of the house Norton had access to everything and excuses for anything—including hiring Billy Bloom and using him as a stooge. If forensics found Norton’s DNA on Jasper’s sheets, he could remind them he made the beds. He could argue his fingerprints were on Jasper’s bedside table because it was he who did the dusting. Nobody would bat an eye if Norton slipped away to get more wood for the fire, or to snatch a thick, rough rope from the shed.
To his friends and grandmother Jasper was a sweetheart, but he had no love for Norton. According to Abella, Jasper was inexplicably rude to Norton on the dock. In her bedroom Camilla suggested her grandchildren should cut Norton some slack, but it was Jasper she’d been talking about. He alone was concerned with Norton’s behavior. Either he didn’t like how close Norton and his grandmother had become, or he sensed Norton was acting strange and got wary.
Even though she never got the chance to tell me, I think Abella sensed it, too. I’d concluded she and Jasper had argued because of the way Jasper was treating Norton. The photos Jade took of them in the hall, both with and without the caretaker, confirmed it. In spite of Abella’s desire to stay on her new boyfriend’s good side, she’d called him out on his discourteous behavior. It wasn’t until later on, when she witnessed firsthand the level of control Norton had over Camilla, that she understood Jasper’s paranoia about his Nana’s trusted companion was warranted.
I knew Norton would run when he saw an opening, for the simple reason that he didn’t belong in this world. It was instinct driving him now, the pure, animal need to flee—not just from Tim and me, but all the Sinclairs. I knew what that felt like. I’d run, too. But Norton was desperate, and he had Jade. She didn’t hesitate to go with him. Leave her father and take off. No, Jade wasn’t a hostage.
That didn’t make her safe.
I reached the river’s edge and wiped water from my eyes. The gun’s grip felt like it was bathed in oil. I squeezed it harder. There was no tracking their footprints. The ground was the same mix of rock and wild grass as the yard up by the house, every blade pounded flat by the rain. The island was large and wooded, and looping to the right would take me nowhere. Only the boathouse lay to the left, and there was nothing there for Norton now, but it seemed the better choice. I hugged the shoreline, pushing through a cluster of trees that thrashed wildly in the high wind. The branches slashed my cheek as I passed and I felt the piercing bite of torn flesh. At the sensation, my memory flickered. I remembered a long, rusty nail gripped tight by a hand as familiar to me as my own, and gagged when I recalled how it punctured my skin and made a breakneck journey across my face. But that pain was old, and I couldn’t dwell on it now. I ran on.