We change locations and start digging separate holes to try to cover more area in less time.
I just hope I’m not wrong about all this.
Forty-Five
By one in the afternoon, neither of us has found Nate’s burial spot, and I’m starting to doubt we ever will. Miles and I have both gone quiet, exhausted and borderline dehydrated. Our only saving grace is that the sky is gloomy and overcast, with rain in the forecast for this evening.
Miles is taking a break, leaning on his shovel and looking at the blisters on his hands.
“Maybe he buried Nate a little farther into the island?” he offers.
I shake my head. “He brought mehere. He was definitely flaunting his crime in front of me.”
Miles doesn’t seem all that convinced; he continues trying to reason with me. “Let’s go over the timeline.”
His shovel falls to the ground with a clang. He approaches me, holding up a blistered finger.
“Marcus leaves around noon to go to the grocery store. Within twenty minutes or so, Valencia goes upstairs to take a nap.” He holds up another finger. “They call the police around four p.m. If Easton brought Nate out here, he had a three-ish-hour window to kill him and hide the body.”
“Right,” I say, still digging, refusing to give up.
“We’ve been out here for three hours, and look how far we’ve gotten.” He gestures to the holes around us. He’s dug two in addition to the one we started together. I’ve moved on to my third, which is right at the entrance to the clearing. My hands burn with blisters of my own, several of which have popped and are now turning crusty with pus.
“What if the tree fell on the grave?” He gestures toward the fallen tree.
But I shake my head and pull up another shovelful of dirt. “They built the fort around the tree, so it was like that when they found this place.”
Miles holds out a hand. “Stop digging for a second and listen to me.” I do as he says, looking into his pitying eyes. “The police have ways of doing this faster. Cadaver-sniffing dogs, radar, sometimes even psychic mediums.”
“He’s here. He has to be!”
Unless Marcus or Valencia really did help Easton hide the body, and we’ll never be able to convince the police of the truth. I’ll be the liar who stole their missing kid’s identity.
Miles frowns. He doesn’t look frustrated or annoyed, just sad. Like he knows it’s all hopeless and thinks I haven’t already realized that he might be right. But then he flinches, as if struck by a thought.
“How did Easton get the shovel out here?” he asks. “Wouldn’t Nate think it was weird?”
“He’d have a story prepared. Like he was expanding the fort or something.” Miles looks disappointed. I wince as another blister pops, this one sloughing off a layer of skin.
“Let me see.” Miles steps forward and takes my hand. He curses when he sees the blisters, then snatches the shovel away. “Okay, enough. We need to regroup, figure out our next steps, and wrap these blisters.”
I sigh. “Fine.” If Easton doesn’t notice us paddling back from the island, we might be able to come back out here to keep looking.
Miles still holds my hand in his. Then he looks up at me, again with that spark of an idea. “Wouldn’t Easton have had blisters on his hands? If a ten-year-old was out here digging for around three hours, wouldn’t he be messed up like we are? And wouldn’t his parents ask him why? Even if he said he was playing tug-of-war with JT, the police would wonder about it, right?”
Shit. He is right. “Which means he didn’t bury him out here.”
Hopeless. This was all hopeless.
“I’m sorry,” Miles says. “I should have thought of it before.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think I’d get the blisters to begin with. Otherwise I would have brought gloves.” Which maybe Easton was smart enough to do. But even if he was, I’m not willing to bring it up to Miles because I do want to stop. I’m tired. My hands hurt. I was hoping I could outsmart Easton, but I can’t.
No one can.
“Come on,” Miles says. “Let’s head back and maybe get something to eat. Figure out our next steps.” He picks up the shovels and I stare at the ruins of the fort. The branches, the towel, the blankets, the fallen tree.
I wonder how old the tree is. It’s almost as wide as I am tall, though I guess since it’s lying horizontally, this is how tall it is now. I followthe thick, rugged bark into the woods where the roots of the tree have been ripped up from the ground.
