3

A few minutes after the generator came on, Ismay heard another knock and hurried to open the front door.

Bo stood there. The porch light was now working, but his hood was up, keeping most of his face in shadow.

“Thanks for coming to my rescue,” she said. “I’m sorry it meant you had to be dragged into the wet cold.”

He kept his flashlight angled at the floor. “No problem. It’s my job,” he said, shrugging off the credit.

“Still, I appreciate it.” She leaned farther outside in an effort to check the progress of the storm. “I’ve never seen weather like this, have you?”

“I grew up in Florida and Louisiana, so I’ve been in a hurricane or two, but nothing that bad up here.”

He looked to be about her age, maybe a few years older, so she guessed he was around nine or ten when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. She’d been six and would never forget her parents being glued to the TV, her mother crying over the lives that were lost. “You weren’t in Louisiana for Katrina, were you?”

“No, but I was there immediately after.”

“Did you move to New Orleans—or somewhere else?”

“I lived with my great-uncle in a little village in the swampland south of NOLA.”

That meant nothing to her. She’d never been there herself. “What brought you to the island?”

“Just...needed a change of pace.”

Another big gust came up, blowing down his hood, but he didn’t bother putting it back up. He looked impervious to the weather anyway, as if he was made of granite and nothing could hurt him. She wondered if he knew he gave that impression.

“Is there anything else I can do for you before I head back?” he asked.

“I’m set for now—I think. Do you have a generator, too?”

“No.”

“Then let me give you your lantern—”

“Keep it,” he said before she could turn away. “I’ve got several flashlights and some candles. I can get by.”

She’d have power and the good lantern? She’d grown up in a large family, where she’d had to share everything, so she felt guilty taking all the best resources. “I’d rather you have it—”

He interrupted by raising his hand in the classic stop position—apparently in lieu of a refusal because he didn’t say anything more about the lantern. “You have food and water, right?”

“I do.” Now that she had her basic needs covered—for the immediate future, anyway—her concerns had shifted. What she needed was someone to convince her that Remy had nothing to do with the items she’d found in his closet.

“Can I give you my number, in case anything comes up later?” Bo asked. “I’m just in the bungalow on the property behind this one, so not far away.”

Getting his information seemed prudent. Although he was a stranger, and certainly looked as though he’d be a formidable foe if she ever had to fight or resist him in any way, his manner and his help with the generator was making her more grateful than wary. After all, the Windsors knew and trusted him. That lent him some credibility. And if he had any intention of harming her, he could easily have done so by now. He knew how vulnerable she was.

Instead, he was keeping a respectful distance and trying to help her through a frightening ordeal.

“Of course,” she said. “Good idea. Then we won’t have to rely on Remy and Annabelle if we need to communicate.” Except this time, she hadn’t brought her phone to the door. It was back on the charger. She was planning to keep the battery as full as possible in case the generator gave out before the storm. “Can you come in for a second?”

“I’m wet,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

Her trust in him shot up several more notches. He certainly wasn’t trying to get inside the house. “There’s no need to stand out in the storm. Never mind if you drip on the floor. I can wipe it up after.”

Trying to keep the wind from ripping the door from her grasp, she stepped to one side to make room for him, and after a brief hesitation, he came in and helped her close the door.

“Whew! Now maybe we can hear each other speak without having to yell,” she said and went to retrieve her cell from the kitchen counter.

When she returned, she found him exactly where she’d left him, right inside the door. “Here you go,” she said and handed him her phone so he could type in his information.

“If something comes up, don’t hesitate to call me, even if it’s late,” he said when he handed it back.

“Thank you.” She hit the Call button to ring his phone, so he’d have her number, too. “And I’d like to make you the same offer. If you need something tonight, feel free to reach out. As you can see, I’m pretty comfortable here and have enough groceries and water to share.”

After acknowledging her words with a nod, he headed out, and she once again braved the wind and the rain to watch him descend the stairs.

When she couldn’t see him anymore, she locked up, then leaned against the door. It felt odd knowing there was a stranger staying not far away, who’d given up his lantern for her. So what if he worked for the Windsors? Why did that mean he had to be the one to go without, especially when she had a generator?

“The privileges of money.” She wasn’t convinced her parents would approve of her letting him sacrifice when he already had less. But then...she wasn’t even convinced they approved of Remy. Although they hadn’t said much, except that they wanted her to be happy, she knew they had to wonder why, since she and Remy had been together for so long, they’d never met him. He’d spoken to them several times over the phone, but every time she thought she might finally bring them together in person—for Christmas, Thanksgiving—Remy would end up having a conflict.

Thinking of her parents made her miss them, the rest of her family, and, more than anything else, the familiar. She’d been excited to come to Mariners for a couple of months. Who wouldn’t want to experience such luxury? Staying in a place like this was usually reserved for the very rich. Without Remy and his family, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity.

But the storm and what she’d discovered while looking for a lighter had left her feeling a bit like the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter in Rebecca, which had been her favorite book as a girl. There were secrets in this cottage. Even after the storm passed, the island recovered, and life carried on with its influx of tanned and beautiful tourists wearing designer sunglasses, she wouldn’t be able to forget the duffel bag she’d put back behind the wall in Remy’s old closet.

Bo sent that message to Annabelle Windsor as soon as he got home and removed his coat. Since he hoped to remain in his current situation for the foreseeable future, he planned to keep her happy.

He peeled off his shirt, which was wet where the rain had seeped down the back of his neck while he’d been working, and tossed it onto the washer. Then, using only a flashlight, he went into the bathroom to dry his face and hair with a towel. Hopefully, Ismay Chalmers was set for the night and he wouldn’t have to go out again.

He paused while he pictured the face of the woman he’d just met. She was beautiful. No one could argue with that. But beauty didn’t matter much to him. He wouldn’t still be thinking about her, except there seemed to be something more to Ismay, something he would hate to see get crushed or turned into a reflection of Remy or even Remy’s mother, who was a much better person than her son. Ismay seemed fresh and unjaded, sweet and concerned about others. He wished he could warn her away from the Windsors.

“Money ruins people,” he muttered, recalling Annabelle’s words yet again. But, like him, Ismay probably thought she could be the exception.

With a sigh, he pulled on a dry shirt and returned to his small living room, where he built a fire to stave off the cold. There wasn’t much to do with the rest of the afternoon, except prepare what food he could make without an oven or microwave—and read.

He had extra batteries, and he wasn’t hungry quite yet, so he decided to wait until later to have dinner. Using his flashlight to be able to see well enough to read, he opened Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. He didn’t have much of an education, had barely attended school after his uncle took him in—most people on their tiny island, the ones he’d associated with, anyway, were uneducated and subsisted on very little other than what they could get from fishing or shrimping—so he’d never had much access to learning materials. He’d certainly never read for pleasure.

But while he was in prison, books had become his salvation, and they were still a huge part of his life. He blitzed through almost any book he could find, craved information the way others craved sex, sugar, praise, or money, and visited the library on the island, which had been established way back in the mid-nineteenth century by the son of the whale-oil merchant who’d founded Mariners. In fact, he went there probably more than anyone else and had devoured hundreds of books since he’d arrived.

He used the internet, too, mostly when he needed to know how to build something or make repairs. Bo could move as fast as he liked and study only what interested him, and he was surprised by how important learning had become to a boy without so much as a high school diploma.

His phone signaled a call.

Reluctantly setting his book aside, he checked to make sure it wasn’t his employer or the woman he was supposed to be looking out for during the storm.

It was neither. But his chest constricted when he saw the name. Matilda was calling again. After so long, why was his sister reaching out to him?

He had no answer for that, but just the thought of speaking to her made him feel as though someone had slugged him in the gut. So, once again, he didn’t answer. For the third time in as many months, he silenced his phone and put it down. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep cleansing breath as he struggled to bury the pain even deeper before returning to his book.

Ismay curled her feet underneath her on the couch and opened her laptop. She’d never heard of a string of women going missing—or being murdered—on Mariners. But she lived across the country, where the news could’ve been muted by more local happenings.

She also hadn’t paid much attention to current events while growing up. Since she’d become an adult, she liked watching Dateline and Forensic Files when she had a free minute, which was probably why her mind kept going back to the items in that darn duffel bag. But during the past decade, free minutes had been hard to come by, and she’d never seen an episode that had anything to do with Mariners, other than the case where a twelve-year-old girl went missing in 2000 or 2001, the police couldn’t figure out what had happened to her, and then her body turned up—fairly recently—near the lighthouse.

While sad, that case had never concerned her personally. And it still didn’t. From what she’d heard and read, the police had finally figured out who killed Emily Hutchins and why, and it had nothing to do with Remy or anyone connected to him.

She told herself the duffel and its contents meant nothing. But she had hours to fill while waiting for the storm to blow over, so she found herself searching the internet for unsolved cases on Mariners, missing women on Mariners, rape on Mariners, and murder on Mariners.

Almost every link went to the Emily Hutchins case. See? You’re assuming far too much.

Except...there had to be a reason, even if it wasn’t the one that first came to mind; those items had been hidden so carefully.

She typed in Mariners, underwear.

Nothing came up. Just a bunch of information about Mariners in general—its history, its Nantucket-like architecture, its towering elms, its quaint shops and cobbled streets—and a few ads selling underwear.

She changed her search parameters once again—this time to Mariners, stolen underwear.

Still nothing.

If there was a string of terrible crimes that’d happened here, there’d be some news piece written about it. The wealthy people who frequented the island would be outraged.

That meant she shouldn’t be worried. She’d done her research and turned up nothing.

She started to close her laptop. She wanted to be done with this.

Except...she could’ve been putting in the wrong information. Could these items be tied to crimes in New York City instead, where Remy and his brother had grown up?

She winced at her uncertainty. It was completely far-fetched, way beyond anything Remy would ever consider doing. Of course.

But she had to explore all possibilities. She wouldn’t wreck her life by sticking her head in the sand just because she didn’t want to face a hard truth. What would police say to the wife who found such a duffel bag and did nothing about it? They’d think she had to know what her husband was up to.

Using keywords to bring up cold cases in New York instead of Mariners, Ismay wound up with the opposite problem. There were so many violent crimes it was overwhelming.

To narrow her results, she tightened her parameters to the period when Remy would’ve been living at home, but the list was still too long.

“Unbelievable.” Setting her laptop aside, she went to his room and got the bag, snapped a picture of the girl’s picture she’d found inside it and tried to use Google’s facial recognition feature. If it could tell her the identity of the person in the photograph, she’d be able to use that to guide her search. But it was such a blurry old photo, the effort proved futile.

With a sigh, she checked her phone to see if Remy had tried to reach her since she’d let him know the generator was on. She hadn’t received a response to her text. He could be so caught up in his own goals. There were moments, plenty of them, when she just didn’t feel important to him. He assured her she was misreading him. But maybe that tendency to withdraw, to be so aloof, was why she was alarmed about what she’d found. It could be difficult to feel close to him, to feel as though she really knew him.

Certain she’d feel better if she could just hear his voice, she considered calling him. The storm had put her in a strange frame of mind. It was making her see things in their worst possible light. She couldn’t imagine she’d be spending so much time scouring the internet if she’d found that bag back at their apartment.

Actually, it would be weird even there, she decided, which was why she didn’t call him. What could she say? She certainly wasn’t going to tell him what she’d been doing for the past two hours. And she needed to let him study, or he’d blame her if he failed.

She stared at the old photograph she’d found a little longer. The young subject was attractive, with thick blond hair and maybe brown eyes—it was hard to tell. She also had a gorgeous tan and was standing on the beach in front of Windsor Cottage...

“No one’s gone missing on Mariners.” Determined to stop her imagination, she returned the bag to its hiding place. Then, when she got back on her computer, she changed her search parameters yet again. She was going to forget about what she’d found in that closet and satisfy a far milder curiosity: Who was Bo Broussard?

She no longer entertained the idea that he might have something to do with the items in that duffel bag. He’d made no move to harm her even though the storm would’ve given him the perfect cover. And she felt certain that, were it his, he would’ve stored it at his own place, where he could reach it whenever he wanted to. Putting that bag in the cottage meant he’d have to worry about the family finding it or getting in the way when he wanted to retrieve it.

There were quite a few Bo Broussards on the internet. But none of them seemed to be the man she’d met. She couldn’t find him on social media, either.

Picking up her phone, she eyed the contact record she’d created when he gave her his information. Then she checked the clock. It was six ten. It’d been two and a half hours since he’d come over to help her.

She wondered what he was doing, if he had food and water, if he still had a working flashlight, if he regretted not accepting the lantern she’d offered him. And just in case he wouldn’t reach out even if he needed something, she sent him a message: