THE ROOM SPUN. MEG BRACED HERSELF AGAINST the wall as the horrifying revelation washed over her.
The house was dead.
There’d been a sense of comfort, however distant, in the idea that there was another house party going on here, just across the isthmus from White Rock House. Kind of like long-distance chaperones in case anything really bad happened. Only apparently the whole thing was a sham. The party, the people, the sense of warmth and safety. All of it was gone in an instant. It was all an illusion.
“What about Kenny and Nathan?” Meg said. Her voice was tight, her words choked off. She was having difficulty breathing and she shook from head to toe. “Do you think—”
“Hold up,” T.J. said. The calmness in his voice was instantly soothing. “First things first.”
He crouched down and yanked the entertainment center away from the wall. The flat-screen TV teetered and crashed onto the floor, but neither she nor T.J. even flinched. It didn’t matter.
“There’s a timer with two power strips attached. Looks like every electronic device in the room is plugged into them.” T.J. passed a hand over his head. “Maybe it’s just some kind of alarm system?”
“What, for all the cat burglars roaming around Henry Island?” Meg said. “And with every window open and the door unlocked? Not likely.”
“Okay,” T.J. said. “Then it’s here for a reason.”
The truth was horrifying. “To throw us off. To make us feel at home.”
“Which means whoever did this—”
“Killed Lori, Vivian, and Ben.”
T.J. nodded. “And probably—”
“Stop.” She knew what he was going to say. And probably Nathan and Kenny. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay,” T.J. said calmly. “But there’s another option.”
Meg’s voice shook. “One or both of them is the killer.”
“Yeah.” T.J. scanned the area at the back of the living room. “The stairs are near the kitchen,” he said. He took her hand lightly, as if he was afraid he would break her. “We should go together.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to flee, to start running and never stop. But she knew T.J. was right: They needed to search the house and see if Nathan and Kenny were still there. They had to know.
Side by side, Meg and T.J. slowly walked through the living room. The curtains ballooned toward her and Meg cowered against T.J.’s arm. It was like they wanted to enfold her, keep her in that house forever. Everything felt tainted, and Meg didn’t want to touch anything. There wasn’t enough antibacterial soap in the world to wash away the feel of that house.
The living room opened into a large kitchen separated by a staircase. A phone was mounted on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Meg held her breath as T.J. picked up the receiver and hit the CALL button. The house had electricity. Maybe, just maybe …
The handset’s ON light glowed in all its green glory. Meg waited, not even daring to breathe, desperate to hear the monotonous drone of a dial tone.
Silence.
T.J. clicked the power button a few times, but still nothing. “It’s charged, but no phone line.”
“No, it has to work. It has to.” She snatched the phone out of his hand and frantically hit every button on the receiver. “There’s power, so the phone has to work.”
“Meg.” T.J. placed his hand on top of hers. “Meg, there’s no dial tone.”
Meg couldn’t look at him. Tears welled up in her eyes, thick and blinding. All she could do was stare at the handset as T.J. slid his hand up her arm and around her shoulders. They were so close to safety. This stupid cordless phone that she so often took for granted could have been their salvation, their connection to the outside world. The phone was charged, it was on, glaring back at her indignantly, flashing the last number called....
Lawrence, John and Jean 360-555-2920
Meg straightened up. “What are Jessica’s parents’ names?”
“Huh?”
“Her parents. What are their names?”
“Uh …” T.J. shook his head, trying to get a handle on what she was asking. “Her dad’s John. And her mom’s …”
“Jean?”
“Yeah, I think so.” T.J. pulled his arm away. “How did you know?”
Meg shoved the phone in his hand. “Look.”
T.J. stared at the handset for a moment, then scrolled through the call log entry. “I think this is the number for White Rock House,” he said. “And it looks like they called it—” T.J. froze. His eyebrows pulled together in a look of utter bewilderment.
“What?”
T.J.’s eyes met hers. “It looks like they called White Rock House yesterday afternoon.”
Meg’s heart pounded in her chest. “That means someone’s here,” she screamed. “Someone must be in the house. Someone alive!”
She spun around blindly, as if expecting to find the Taylors standing there in the kitchen making dinner.
T.J. shook his head. “Meg, I don’t think—”
“No!” she snapped. “Someone’s here. We just have to find them.” Meg’s eyes drifted to the staircase. Of course! They must be upstairs sleeping or something. Without a second thought, she bolted up the stairs.
“Meg, wait!”
But she wasn’t listening. She took the stairs two at a time, desperate to get to the top. She knew there’d be someone there. Someone who could help. Had to be. There had to be someone. There had to be—
Meg never even saw what she tripped over. As she raced up the stairs and onto the second-floor landing, her foot hit something big and heavy on the ground. She lost her balance and flopped face-first over the object, landing half on it, half off it, and smacked her forehead on the thin rug.
“Meg, are you okay?” T.J. was just steps behind her. “What happened?”
Meg rolled onto her side, rubbing her head. “I’m fine. Just tripped on …” She looked back to see what she had fallen over.
It was a body. A huge body.
Kenny.
Her face was just inches from his. So close. His eyes were closed and his face peaceful. He wasn’t stiff and cold like Lori had been, evidence that he hadn’t been there long. And though Meg wished she could believe he was just taking a nap there on the floor, his body was utterly still, breathless and unmoving, and several red streaks marred his forehead and cheek, cascading downward from his skull.
Meg scrambled away from the body as if it had been covered in poisonous snakes. Dead. Kenny was dead. She clawed at her clothes, trying to wipe the death off of her. It was too much. It was all too much.
“Meg!” T.J. had his arms around her in an instant, helping her off the ground.
“I can’t take it,” she sobbed. “I can’t take it anymore.”
T.J. stroked her hair. “I know, baby. I know.”
Meg buried her face in his shoulder. “When I saw the phone call I thought … I thought …”
“I know,” he said quietly. “But, Meg, that was the call I got. The one that was supposed to be from Mr. Lawrence.”
Meg pulled her head back. “What?”
“Yeah. The caller ID marks the call at the exact time we heard from Jessica’s dad. Or someone pretending to be Jessica’s dad, I guess. The connection was pretty bad.”
Meg wiped the tears from her cheeks. “It was the killer.”
“Yeah.”
They stared at Kenny’s body. Neither of them bent down to check for a pulse. Neither of them made a move to touch him.
The hair on the back of his head was slick and wet. Beside the body lay a black mallet, and Meg could see a chunk of Kenny’s dark, curly hair stuck to the metal head. Someone had bludgeoned him from behind. Kenny probably never even saw who hit him. Maybe that was a good thing, not seeing the approach of death. Maybe that made it easier? Or at least less painful.
A sudden noise brought Meg’s disconnected consciousness back into the terrifying present. Both she and T.J. froze. There was a rustling—like the movement of fabric—coming from a half-closed door to their left.
Meg held her breath. Nathan. It had to be Nathan. He’d had the opportunity to kill Lori and Vivian, and he could easily have put the ground-up pecans in Ben’s water bottle. And now Kenny. All of them went to Mariner—Nathan was killing them off one by one.
She grabbed T.J.’s jacket. “Nathan,” she mouthed, not daring to make a sound. She tried to pull him back down the stairs. “Nathan’s the killer.”
T.J. had something else in mind. He pressed his finger to his lips, then noiselessly lifted a large iron candelabra off an end table in the hall. He raised it above his head as he tiptoed to the door.
Meg followed right behind him. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt like she needed to be there, to be his backup, in case Nathan attacked him. Together, they could stop him before he killed someone else.
T.J. glanced at her and she watched as his lips silently counted.
One …
Two …
Three.