The moon lit the stone beach, almost as bright as a streetlight.
“Nothing here,” Sofia called from the second hive-domed FEMA tent.
“Not here, either,” Marlowe yelled. She was crouched low, shining a flashlight into the darkness under a particularly large boulder’s overhang.
“Same,” Plum called from the opposite side of the small beach. She was moving up and down in a quick search.
Although she knew the beach was small, the search had still gone quicker than she’d expected.
“Let’s go back,” Plum suggested. “We can help them. Or maybe the others found something.”
“You mean someone,” Sofia said darkly.
“Yeah,” Plum said. “That too.”
Sofia led the way back up the path, toward Mabuz Villa.
“I have to say something,” Plum said, slowing down. “Before we get back to the conservatory.”
“What?” Marlowe asked.
Plum stopped and turned to face her friends.
“I’m sorry.” The words weren’t big enough for the regret she felt. “It’s my fault we’re here. I talked you both into coming. It was foolish to start with, and now it’s actually dangerous!”
Sofia heaved a sigh. “Listen, while I appreciate the sentiment, and while you’re right, I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to talk about this right now.”
Plum felt a splinter edge into her heart. She’d known it, Sofia was upset at her, and she couldn’t fix it. “I’m sorry,” Plum stammered again.
“Now’s not the time,” Marlowe said, touching Plum’s elbow consolingly.
“I love you anyway, but I am mad, and I do, you know, blame you, and I’m not ready to try to get over that feeling, even if you’re ready to say you’re sorry.” Sofia lifted her face, closing her eyes to the moonlight.
It was limbo, and Plum felt a new wash of guilt for asking for forgiveness in the middle of the crisis.
Plum was going to make it right. She had to.
Even if she wasn’t sure how to do that just yet.
“We have bigger problems right now,” Marlowe continued, dropping her hand from Plum’s arm.
“Yeah, like trying to figure out how to get off this island and protect ourselves from the killer,” Sofia said. She opened her eyes but still didn’t look at Plum.
“The first question is, do you guys think we are in any more or any less danger than the others?” Marlowe asked. “Since we’re here as impostors? That note seemed pretty pointed toward Brittlyn’s actions as an influencer, didn’t it?”
Sofia nodded. “It did, and we’re nobodies. In a good way.”
Plum felt a sinking in her stomach. “We’re not nobodies though.”
“Jesus, now isn’t the time for your ambitions and—” Sofia turned on her in frustration.
Plum took a step back, holding up her hands. “No, I mean, we’re nobodies, but we’re, um. Somebody-adjacent. And everyone knows it.”
Peach.
Marlowe put a hand to her lips in thought.
“Ugh!” Sofia fumed. “The one the invitation was actually for.”
“Why are these people targets?” Marlowe murmured. Her blue-green eyes narrowed. “Why Peach? Is there something linking them?”
Plum snorted. “Hardly.” She gestured up the path in the direction of the villa. “I’d bet a thousand dollars Peach doesn’t know who any of these C-list and no-list ‘influencers’ even are.”
“There has to be a reason. Right? There were only nine people invited. Unless it’s just that we’re the only ones who showed up?” Sofia asked.
“I don’t think so. I mean, that invitation and the website and the app, it was all really convincing,” Plum said. She remembered the splashy festival portal, the thrill of finding the same blazing icon in the app store.
Sofia gave her a laser-eye look.
“I’m not just saying that to make myself feel better!” Plum protested. “It was convincing! It wasn’t aimed at us, sure, but it made me so certain it was real and was going to be amazing!”
“I thought so, too,” Marlowe agreed. “So, what’s your point?”
Plum stepped closer to her friends and lowered her voice, even though no one else was around. “My point is, I think there were only nine invitations. Only nine targets.”
“And we took Peach’s place,” Sofia said. Her eyes narrowed.
A cool salt wind pushed at them.
“We’re not any safer because we’re not Peach,” Marlowe concluded.
Plum nodded, feeling a regretful frown tugging at her lips. “In the eyes of the killer, whoever they are, we have to accept that we’re every bit as bad as Peach. And, I mean, if the killer is ready to kill nine people . . .”
Her voice trailed off. It was too hard to openly state the dark thought.
Marlowe did it for her.
“What’s three more?”
A shiver marched over Plum’s skin. The proverbial goose walking on her grave.
The wind gusted again.
“We need to make a plan,” Marlowe said. Her voice was firm.
“Yes,” Sofia agreed. She stepped closer to Marlowe.
“We can’t tell the others that Peach isn’t coming, for starters,” Marlowe said.
Plum stepped closer instinctively, shielding their words from the night and the wind.
“Right, because if one of them is the killer,” she began.
“Then they might be waiting for Peach to arrive,” Sofia continued. “And us coming, and Peach arriving later—”
“Wasn’t part of their plans!” Plum exclaimed softly.
She huddled in closer, feeling a sudden hopefulness.
“Warix said that the killer was at least one step ahead of us,” Plum continued. “And that’s been true so far.”
“But the killer didn’t know we’d taken Peach’s place. And they don’t know we’re lying that she’s coming later.” Marlowe picked up the thought and fleshed it out.
“So for now, let’s not tell anyone the truth,” Plum said. “We’ve come this far, so we’ll just keep it going.”
“In the meantime, we should try to figure out why these people. They have to have something in common,” Marlowe suggested. “It might help us to figure out which one is the killer.”
“Even if the killer lies, the others won’t,” Sofia said firmly.
Plum looked at her friend in appreciation. Even though Sofia was often anxious, she had a core of steel, that was for sure.
“Tomorrow the boat will come back,” Plum said.
“I mean, Wadsworth did say that there’d be another boat in the morning,” Sofia said. “Unless the AI’s in cahoots with the killer?”
“Whatever cahoots is,” Plum murmured. “We could keep going around and around on this. I don’t know that it’s helpful to just go in circles.”
“No one really knows the origin of the word cahoots,” Marlowe interjected. “But it’s suspected it’s from the French word for cabin or hut, which morphed into cohort and then cahoots.”
Sofia and Plum stared at her in silence.
“Oh, that was rhetorical, huh?” Marlowe snapped. “Excuse me for knowing the answer.”
A snort escaped from Sofia. Then it morphed into a giggle.
“Okay,” Plum said, starting to laugh as well. A bit from stress and a bit from how cute Marlowe was when she was mad, with the added ridiculousness of how the wind was tossing her hair around.
“Let’s go back and start our investigation,” Marlowe grumbled. She turned and stomped up the cliff path.