“Ria,” I gasped out with the little bit of air left in my lungs. “I’m on your side.”
She narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’m a friend of Lori’s.”
Her expression wary, she lifted her weight off of me and tried to stand. With her feet still bound together, she landed on her butt next to me.
I struggled to a sitting position, trying to catch my breath. “We’ve got to get your feet loose fast, and get out of here. Before the person who tied us up comes back.”
She shook her head, looked around. “What the devil is going on? And why are we in the guest suite?”
“Buddy, go get scissors.” Then to Ria, I said, “I’ll give you the long version later. Short version, someone has been trying to poison you, I mean Ellie… the body. When I figured out what was going on, they got more desperate and kidnapped Ellie, brought her up here and tied her up. They were going to kill you, uh, her, once the storm let up–”
“What storm?”
“We’re in the middle of a hurricane.”
Ria’s eyes widened. “That explains the howling wind.”
Buddy trotted over with the pruning shears between his teeth.
I took them and handed them to Ria—with some trepidation. I wasn’t sure how I felt about arming her.
“Sorry about sitting on you.” She savagely ripped at the tape on her ankles. “When I saw that you had these shears…” She trailed off as she freed herself in record time.
She jumped up and reached down to grab my hand. Hauling me to my feet, she said, “Who are you exactly?”
“You know Ellie was getting a service dog, right? I’m her dog’s trainer. Um, Lori told me about the DID.”
Ria nodded, then froze for a second when she saw my hand, held out for the shears. With obvious reluctance, she gave them to me.
Jamming them into my back pocket again, I rushed to the door and cracked it open.
Male voices drifted up from below. Bruce and Jack were back. I expelled a sigh of relief, more about Jack than Bruce.
Another voice. It sounded like the pirate’s, only not as deep and without the gravel.
Lucy. She was talking to them.
I eased the door closed, turned and grabbed Lori’s, um, Ria’s hand.
Dang, this is confusing.
“Come on.” The dogs followed as we hustled across the room and into the bathroom. Ria must have guessed my agenda. She went right to the door to the servants’ corridor.
I got the dogs in after us and closed the door. There were only a few sconces on the walls of this hallway, but it was enough light to tiptoe our way to the top of the stairs.
I stopped there. Whispering, I gave Ria the longer version, leaving out the identity of the pirate for now. I was about to ask if she had any questions, when the lights went out.
Crapola. I crouched down and felt around blindly for the dogs. I trusted Buddy to stay with me, but Nugget, not so much—although perhaps being lost in the storm had cured her wanderlust.
“Come here,” I whispered to them. Buddy’s big nose touched my palm. By feel, I found and removed his collar, then patted around blindly until I connected with a silky ear. I slipped the collar onto Nugget’s neck, pulled Buddy’s leash from my pocket and snapped it on.
“Ria, follow us,” I said softly.
A small grunt was her answer.
“Go on down, boy.”
Buddy led the way as we carefully settled one foot and then the other on each step in the pitch black, narrow stairwell. I tried not to imagine what would happen if one of us made a wrong step.
At the second-floor landing there was a bit of ambient light. I peeked around the corner. An arch of medium gray revealed the top of the servant stairs leading up from the main living area. Rumbling male voices drifted up to us.
I half turned and touched Ria’s arm, put Nugget’s leash in her hand. “Wait here for a second,” I whispered. “Buddy, stay.”
Worrying a little that Ria might rebel against me taking charge, I tiptoed along the second-floor passageway and stopped at the top of the steps. The light was dim but steady. Most likely coming from camping lanterns then, not flashlights or candles. I strained to hear what they were saying.
I recognized Bruce’s baritone but couldn’t make out more than the occasional word. A deeper grunt was probably Jack. And the other voice.…
I found the stairs’ railing and took three careful steps down.
“How’d you get here anyway?” Jack’s voice, annoyed.
“I stowed away, when you made the supply run.” Yes, that was definitely the pirate’s voice, more an alto than the fake bass.
“The stuck door of the head,” Jack said. “You’d locked yourself in there.”
A low chuckle. I was pretty sure it didn’t come from Jack. He’d sounded pissed.
“Why’d you come out here?” Jack’s tone left the words, to get stuck in a hurricane hanging in the air.
A couple of seconds ticked by with no response.
I imagined the awkward glances Lucy and Bruce were exchanging.
“I, uh, knew Bruce would resist leaving the house,” Lucy said. “I wanted to convince him to come back to the mainland, with the rest of y’all.”
“But the storm hadn’t veered this way yet.” Jack wasn’t buying it. “We were stocking up just in case, at that point.”
And what about the sugar in the gas tank? Ms. Snark asked.
I was pretty sure now that Lucy had committed that act of sabotage, to keep us all on the island so she could get rid of Ellie once and for all.
“Look, that doesn’t matter now,” Bruce, impatient. “What are we going to do about Ellie and Marcia?”
My heart rate kicked up several notches. Did Bruce know we were supposed to be upstairs, tied up and gagged? Was Jack in on it too? That thought made my stomach lurch.
“We can’t go out there now,” Lucy said. “The storm’s picked up again. We’ll end up lost ourselves, and maybe get hurt, or worse. There are places they could’ve found shelter, the woodshed or the beach house.”
I slowly breathed out a soft sigh. The men didn’t know we were in the house.
I could imagine what Lucy’s plan was. Wait until Bruce and Jack had gone out to look for us. Pretend she was going to search too, then take us to the sinkhole on the north end of the island.
We had to somehow expose her before the storm let up.
But if we just waltzed into the living area and confronted her, would she pull her gun and start shooting? I didn’t know how stable she was.
Parading around in a pirate’s costume, Ms. Snark commented, I’d say not very.
“I can’t believe they went looking for that stupid dog,” Bruce said.
“When you domesticate an animal,” Jack’s voice, “you must take responsibility for its safety.”
That sounded very Native American, and I agreed. Even if Nugget had been a strange dog, maybe a new one I wasn’t yet attached to, I still would’ve searched for her. She was my responsibility.
“I checked the radio,” Jack was saying. “Pierre is breaking up some. Wind shear in the upper atmosphere. It should ease up in a few hours.”
Smiling a little—my guess had been right—I backed cautiously up the steps and crept back to Ria and the dogs. Wordlessly, I led them down the back stairs into the inky darkness of the first floor.
Feeling along the wall, I found Greta’s door, then moved on to my own. Hands out in front of me, I walked slowly to where the dresser should be. I banged my shin on the edge of the bedframe.
My hands felt along the bed, found the nightstand, then my own purloined lantern sitting on it.
I flipped the switch at the lantern’s base, and it gave off a soft glow. Ria and I blew out air in unison.
You don’t realize how precious light is until it’s gone.
“Close the door,” I whispered.
Ria eased it shut.
Gesturing for the dogs to lie down, I perched on the side of the bed. Ria took the straight-backed chair.
“There were three voices,” I said, “one of them is the pirate who tied us up. And I think it’s a woman. Do you know Lucy from town?”
“They all sounded like men to me.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You snuck up behind me.”
She grinned.
I shook my head. “The slightly higher pitched voice, I think that’s Lucy. She and Bruce are having an affair.”
Ria’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, yeah. Surprised he has the guts to pull that off.”
I frowned at her. “Not the word I would use.” To me, having an affair was a rather gutless thing to do.
“Oh, he acts all in charge, and Ellie lets him push her around, up to a point, and then Lori puts him back in his place. He caves pretty fast when she goes after him.”
That struck me as a fairly accurate description of the dynamics I’d witnessed so far. I almost felt sorry for Bruce. Almost.
Then something else struck me. “How do you know all this?”
Ria’s cheeks pinked a little. “Um, I can sometimes hear Lori’s thoughts, or what’s happening when she’s out. What is it that therapist calls it…”
The term surfaced from the depths of my memory. “Co-consciousness?”
She nodded.
I wondered about the “that therapist.” Apparently, Ria wasn’t all that engaged in the therapeutic process.
Ria threw her shoulders back and puffed out her chest. “So let’s go get this woman. There’s two of us and only one of her.”
Hmm, I was beginning to see a problem with an alter who believed she was an Amazon warrior but who lived inside a waif-sized body like Ellie’s.
“Let’s try to think of something else. She has a gun.”
That didn’t slow Ria down much. “All the more reason to take her by surprise, before she can get it out. And we’ve got the shears.”
I shook my head. Even with two against one, shears against a gun didn’t seem like great odds. “We could barricade ourselves in here until morning, but it’s one of the first places she’ll look, when she realizes we’re not still upstairs.” I gestured toward the door, “And there’s no lock.”
I was crashing from the adrenaline rush of fighting to get free upstairs. My body longed to crawl into bed and pretend everything would be okay in the morning.
“We could stay here,” Ria was saying, “and wait for her to come for us. One of us stays by the door, jumps her when she comes in.” She stood, spread her legs and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll take the first watch.”
I almost laughed out loud at the sight of Ellie’s five-four, ninety-five-pound body posed like a Spartan soldier.
When I had control of myself, I said, “As tempting as that plan is…” I stroked the comforter on my bed. “I think we need to be more proactive.”
I focused on the sounds of the storm. The wind still howled and the rain still rat-a-tat-tatted loudly on the metal roof three stories up, but maybe it was letting up some.
Had the men succeeded in getting the satellite dish fixed? Would it be able to transmit a signal through the interference of the storm?
“Come on then,” Ria said, her voice tense. “Let’s find this fake pirate.”
“Hang on.” Where was my laptop? I looked around the dimly lit room. Dang, I’d left it in the kitchen.
I spotted my cell phone on the nightstand, grabbed it up. I tapped the email icon and prayed. It opened, and I switched it over to connect to the wifi network. Hallelujah, it connected, and the incoming emails were updating.
I scanned through them, skipping the one from my mom, subject line: WHERE ARE YOU? And the one from Becky—Storm coming your way!!!
Old news I’m afraid, Beck.
Ah, there was the one from Will that I’d been sure would be there. Coming to you was the subject line. I clicked on it.
It froze while loading. I held my breath. Suddenly the text of the message popped up. I blew out air.
“What are you doing?” Ria said impatiently.
“My fiancé’s law enforcement.” I was skimming the email. “I’m gonna tell him to bring reinforcements.”
The gist of Will’s message was that he was driving to Dahlia and would find someone with a boat to come out to the island to get us. The time stamp was shortly after we had talked yesterday, or rather had tried to talk through the static.
I hit reply. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Again, I held my breath.
Finally, the reply box popped up. I quickly typed: Bring local sheriff’s deputies. One of the ghosts I told you about is fake. Live person who may have killed the housekeeper. Planning to kill Ellie. Love you!
I opted not to mention that I was on the fake ghost’s hit list too. That would really freak Will out and he might do something reckless.
More reckless than driving toward a hurricane? Ms. Snark asked.
Ignoring her, I hit send, prayed, and crossed fingers on both hands to boot. Which made it hard to hang onto the phone.
It seemed to take a month but eventually your message has been sent came up. Again, I blew out pent-up air.
Ria was tapping her foot, her arms crossed over her chest.
“I sent him an email. I think it went through.” I muted the phone and activated its light. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost my trusty flashlight.
“Okay, let’s go already.”
I shook my head. “We can’t just rush out there without a plan.”
Ria scowled at me. “What’s your plan then?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t have one.”