“Darcy!” I screamed again. “Darcy, please answer me!”
Somewhere off in the distance, somewhere impossibly far away, I heard a shout. I heard Darcy cry out.
My hands reached up to cover my mouth. There was no way to know where the shout had come from. No way to tell which direction I was even facing. I stood there and listened, hoping for another shout, another sign, anything. But all I could hear was the pounding of my heart and the incessant hissing of the mist.
Darcy was gone. And Nell had her.
Over the years, he had learned that sisters were not the same. It didn’t matter how alike they looked, how close in age they were, that they’d grown up in the same household under the same rules. In his experience there was almost nothing about them that was similar. Not their smell, not their taste, not their spirit. Often, one sister was far more successful, in colloquial terms, than the other. Prettier, more outgoing, more popular. Some theorized that this was a simple fluke of nature, but not him. He believed that it was all because of psychological warfare.
The sisters might not have even known this war was being waged, but it always was, and it was often the second- or third-born who suffered. She slipped out of the womb fresh and full of hope and purpose, but was quickly taught that she was not special, she would never be the one-and-only, she would never be as good or as loved as the first. And so, she receded. She curled in on herself. She found a way to survive, but not to shine.
Rory Miller deserved to have a chance to shine, but alas, she was the second-born. Perhaps she would thank him when she saw what he’d done for her. Thank him for giving her the opportunity she never had, to be the one, the only, the star.
Of course, she would only have one, precious, fleeting moment to take her rightful place in her family, before he slaughtered her, too.
Someone slammed into my side, and I staggered to the left, my hand gripping the cold metal garbage can to keep me from going down.
“Sorry. Didn’t see you,” a guy’s voice said.
The crowd was moving around me, headed back toward town in the disorienting fog. Someone stepped on my foot. A hand grazed my hip. Another person walked right into the garbage can, nearly knocking it over. I clung to Darcy’s sweater and turned around and around, trying to find someone I recognized, desperate to do something.
A hand came down on my shoulder, and I screamed.
“Rory! It’s just me!” Tristan held both my arms. He took one look in my eyes and paled. “What’s wrong?”
“My sister,” I said. “I can’t find my sister.”
Joaquin and Krista materialized out of the mist, standing just behind Tristan. Joaquin was wearing a red-and-white striped polo shirt with the collar flipped up, and the whole preppy-superior look made me want to smack him.
“What?” Joaquin said, a shadow crossing his face.
“She went looking for you after you stood her up!” I snapped, venom spewing from my tongue. “And now he’s—”
I stopped, biting down on my tongue. I couldn’t tell them about Steven Nell. I wasn’t allowed.
“And now she’s just disappeared!” I finished.
“Disappeared?” Krista asked, alarmed.
“And don’t tell me, ‘She’s Darcy, she’s fine!’” I shouted at Joaquin sarcastically, mimicking his voice. “And don’t you dare tell me people come and go around here all the time!” I added, whirling on Tristan. “This is my sister we’re talking about.”
“What’s going on?” Kevin asked.
He, Fisher, Bea, and Lauren appeared as if from nowhere, gathering around Tristan, their expressions serious. Oh, so now that Joaquin was officially involved they were willing to help.
“Darcy Thayer is missing,” Tristan said.
“Wait, like missing missing?” Fisher asked.
“What?” Lauren asked. “But it’s not—”
“We know,” Joaquin said, cutting her off. “Everyone, fan out. We have to find her. Fisher, you get the beach. Kevin, you’re on the docks. Lauren and Bea, you guys go into town, and Krista—”
“I know,” Krista said. “I’m on it.”
She turned and took off into the fog as the others disappeared as well, moving off in all directions. The mist shifted and swirled before swallowing them whole, one by one. Somewhere in the distance, a boat’s bell clanged, the sound muted by the thickness of the air.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s Krista ‘on’?”
Joaquin looked stonily away from me.
“Hello? You said I can ask you anything, right?” I said, grabbing his arm. “So what does she know? Where’s she going?”
My chest was about to burst in frustration, but Joaquin remained silent. I turned to Tristan. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Rory—” Tristan started.
“Dude, now is not the time,” Joaquin said warningly, grabbing Tristan’s shoulder. “We have to go.”
Tristan’s face flushed with color. “You have to be kidding me. Now you want to shut her out? This is her sister we’re talking about!”
My pulse pounded in my very eyes. What were they talking about? What were they keeping from me?
“This is different, Tristan,” Joaquin said through his teeth. “This is DEFCON One. Something’s wrong. The girl wasn’t ready yet. We have to get inside. We have to tell them what’s going on. You know this.” He turned to me, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “I’m sorry, Rory,” he said, his tone all business.
Then he turned and started off in the direction of Tristan’s house. At least, I thought his house was off that way. In the fog, it was almost impossible to know for sure. Tristan looked at me and pressed his lips together, clearly desperate to speak. I felt like I was being folded inside out.
“Come on, dude,” Joaquin said, his voice coming from somewhere deep within the fog.
Tristan took one step back, one step away. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Tristan, no. Don’t go,” I pleaded. “Please, just tell me what’s going on. I know you want to. Just tell me!”
He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “Not yet.”
“What does that mean, not yet?” I cried, tears streaming down my face. With one last, regretful look, he turned and walked away from me, the mist swirling around him. “Wait! What does that mean, not yet? Tristan! Tristan, come back! Don’t just leave me here!”
But Tristan didn’t come back, and I was left alone in the fog, holding my sister’s sweater.
I was right on my father’s heels as he shoved open the doors of the Juniper Landing Police Department and barreled into the freezing cold lobby, slipping his Yankees baseball cap from his head.
“It’s my daughter!” he shouted. “She’s—”
We both stopped in our tracks in the center of the wide room. There were about fifty people gathered there in dark blue JUNIPER LANDING jackets, and they all fell silent and stared. Most of them were gathered around the counter, where it looked like the police had laid out a map of some kind. I heard a rustling, and suddenly the heavyset officer from that morning stepped out from behind the counter, hiking up his pants at the back.
“You must be Mr. Thayer,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Police Chief Grantz. We already know about your daughter, sir. We’re putting together a search party.”
He gestured around the room, and a few of the people around us nodded. A man with white hair tucked a piece of paper behind his back, and I thought I saw a glimpse of Darcy’s face on it. I glanced around quickly and saw a few other people shove photos into their pockets as well. Where had they gotten a picture of Darcy?
“Thank you, but we don’t need a search party,” my father said gruffly. “What we need is to call the FBI.”
A murmur went through the crowd and quickly grew into a din. Chief Grantz looked around nervously.
“Let’s go back to my office and talk, shall we?”
The chief gripped my father’s arm and ste
ered him back behind the counter. I followed, feeling dozens of pairs of eyes trailing me as I went. We skirted a few neatly kept desks in the center of the room, and then Grantz opened a door, waiting until we’d stepped inside before he closed it behind him. The chief’s office was small and square, with a metal desk in the center and a huge JUNIPER LANDING PD emblem on the wall behind it. There were no filing cabinets, no high-tech equipment. Nothing but a phone and a coatrack with a jacket and one hat hung on it. In the center of the desk was Darcy’s senior photo from school. My blood ran cold. How had they gotten that picture? No one on this island had that picture except maybe my dad, and if he had it, it was in his wallet. The chief saw me staring at it and shoved it into a drawer.
I glanced at my father, but he didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss. In the next room, a pair of tense voices argued, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“There’s no need to be alerting the feds, sir,” the chief said quietly. “Your daughter has been missing less than an hour.”
“But there is a reason,” my father said, shooting me a wary, bolstering look as he wrung his baseball cap in his hands. “My family is here as part of the witness protection program. My daughter Rory was attacked by a serial killer named Roger Krauss just last week and as far as we know he was never caught. There’s a possibility he has Darcy now.”
The man stared at us. There was a long, drawn-out pause, and I felt like I could hear the gears in his head working through this information. “Sir, that’s highly unlikely.”
“I don’t care how unlikely it is!” my father shouted. “I want them called in, now!”
The police chief took a step back and for once in my life, I was glad that my father was so scary when he was pissed off. In the next room, something slammed and there was a shout of surprise.
“All right. All right, then. I’ll call my contact at the FBI.”
The man moved over to the desk and reached for the black phone sitting near the corner. The arguing next door continued, growing louder, tenser, but still unintelligible.
“If you’d please wait outside?” the chief asked, glancing at the wall between us and the fight.
“No. I want to be here for this,” my father said.
“I understand, sir, but I’m afraid it’s protocol,” the chief said, his hand shaking slightly as he lifted the receiver. “I can’t have civilians in the room while I discuss a case with the FBI.”
My father blew out a frustrated sigh but yanked the door open. He let me through first, then slammed it, causing another stoppage of noise in the lobby. I saw a few people staring at us over the counter and turned my back to them. Inside the office, Chief Grantz began to speak in low tones.
“I’m so sorry, Rory,” my father said, rubbing his brow with one hand and sitting down on a bench outside the office. He looked up at me, his eyes heavy. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “I didn’t even know what to believe. Until now.”
He reached for my hand and held it. “If I lose her…”
“I know,” I said, my voice full. “We can’t even think about that.” I took a breath. “Dad? Can I see your wallet?”
His brows knit, but he reached for his back pocket. “Why?”
“I just want to check something,” I said.
I flipped open the soft leather billfold and reached into the pocket where my dad kept family photos. Out came my sophomore picture, my bangs too short and my smile too big, and right behind it was Darcy’s photo. It was still there. He hadn’t lost it. Darcy hadn’t taken it and given it to Joaquin. No one had stolen it to make copies. So how the hell had the cops distributed it?
The door behind us opened, and the chief came striding out. “Good news. It’s not Roger Krauss.”
“What?” I breathed. My father stood up, still clinging to my hand. The voices in the next room escalated.
“I just spoke to an Agent Lawrence with the FBI,” the chief said, drawing himself up straight. “He says this Nell character took off for Canada, and they’re following several leads there. They seem to think they’re closing in on him. They want you to stay here for a few more days until they’ve brought him in, but they assured me that the man is nowhere near Juniper Landing.”
I let out a breath, relief flooding through me. Canada. Darcy was all right.
“Thank goodness,” my father said, relaxing slightly. “But then where’s Darcy? Where’s my daughter?”
“That’s what the search party is for, sir,” the chief said, placing his hand on my father’s back and leading him toward the counter, away from the quickly escalating argument behind closed doors. “Every now and then, one of our visitors gets lost on the beach or turned around in that nasty fog and we have to go out and find them. We’ve done this before, and we’ve always been successful. So if you’ll just let us go about our business…”
“Well, we want to join the search party,” my father said forcefully. “Rory and I can help.”
Someone nearby coughed, and the police chief tugged on his ear. “That won’t be necessary,” he said.
“Why not? The more people looking for her, the better, right?” I said.
“Well, yes, I suppose, in theory, but I think it’s better if you two wait for her back at your house. You never know. She might just come walking through the door, and if no one’s there, we have no way of knowing about it.”
My father looked at me, considering the logic of this. I could tell he felt much better, much more secure, knowing that Steven Nell or Roger Krauss or whatever we were calling him was out of the picture. I wanted to feel that way, too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d had all week that something was off.
“Okay, fine,” my father said finally, putting his arm around me. “We’ll go home. But you’ll let us know the second you find anything?”
“Of course,” the chief replied solicitously.
An office door behind the counter flung open and angry voices echoed through the room.
“What makes you think you know more about this than I do?” a familiar voice shouted. I turned around just in time to see Joaquin, his face as red as blood, shout back over his shoulder into the office. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
He stormed toward the back of the building, not noticing me or my father, and slammed through a heavy metal door. One second later, Officer Dorn stepped into the doorway of the office, looking shaken—like he’d just taken a scolding.
“Who the hell was that?” my father asked me under his breath as we moved toward the front door.
“That was Joaquin,” I replied, my legs quaking.
“The boy Darcy likes?” he asked, holding the door open for me. “Wow. He seemed really upset. He must like her, too.”
“Yeah,” I said vaguely. “He must.”
But had my dad not registered what he’d said, what we’d just seen? What was Joaquin doing, telling off a police officer? What did he mean “Who the hell do you think you are?” And what, exactly, did he know more about than Dorn did?
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 o
verhead, 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.