“The bar is stocked with anything you might like—water, juice, and soda. Spirits as well. Your bags should arrive shortly.”
“Thank you,” Sidney said. She glanced at the placard outside the door:306.
“Yes,” the woman said, recognizing the question in Sidney’s eyes. “This was the room she stayed in.”
Sidney nodded.
“Please call if you need anything,” the woman said.
“Thank you.”
Sidney closed the cottage door and allowed the air-conditioned interior to cool her body and unstick her shirt from her skin. She looked around the room, moving her gaze from the shining wooden floors to the lush bathroom accommodations, to the sun-drenched patio, and finally to the plush four-poster bed, with its brilliant white comforter. She ran her hand over the thick blanket before sitting on the edge.
Ten years earlier, Grace Sebold had slept in this very room the night Julian Crist was killed.
CHAPTER 2
THE TROPICAL GARDENS WERE PLUSH AND GREEN ASSIDNEY AND HERcrew walked along the resort’s serpentine paths that wound toward the beach. Once past the pool, her tennis shoes sank into the sand of Sugar Beach. Around her, the twin peaks sprouted into the sky. On her right and to the north, Petit Piton; on her left and to the south, Gros Piton. Laid between the summits was a two-hundred-yard stretch of sugar-white sand that glistened under the hot sun. Closer toward the water, the sand was darker, where the surf washed over it and bathed it into wet caramel.
“Ms. Ryan?” a young Caribbean man asked as he approached.
“Sidney.” She reached out and shook his hand.
“Darnell. I’ll be guiding you and your crew today. Are you ready?”
Sidney nodded. She looked back to her camera guys and pointed to the Pitons. “Get these,” she said to her crew. “A few stills from the base to the peak, with a clouded sky above. Maybe time-lapse it to get a tropical storm moving through. Might be a good promo, beautiful scenery one minute and a ferocious storm the next. Aerials would workwell, if we can budget it.” She looked back to Darnell. “Is the hike difficult?”
“To the summit?” He smiled. His teeth were broad and white. “Yeh, man. To the Soufriere Bluff? Easy.”
“Easy?”Sidney asked.
“No problem.” Darnell pointed to Sidney’s bicep, then flexed his own and let out a jovial laugh. “Trust me. No problem.”
Thirty minutes later, they had completed the necessary paperwork and signed the waivers required to partake in a guided hike up Gros Piton. The trip to the summit was an all-day excursion taking more than four hours. To the bluff where Julian Crist was killed required thirty minutes of walking along a narrow path flanked by heavy foliage, with occasional views of Pitons Bay to the north and the Jalousie Plantation to the east.
Sidney and her crew were halfway to the bluff when they came to a staircase made from boulders and flanked by a makeshift bamboo railing. The structure had been reinforced over the years with additional balustrades and a few odd rocks. The man-made arrangement tackled a steep gorge that would otherwise be too challenging to traverse.
“Darnell,” Sidney said as they approached the Stone Age staircase. “Has this portion of the hike changed over the years?”
“No. Same now as it’s always been.”
“So, ten years ago, this was the same staircase?”
“Yeh, man. Same is same.”
Sidney directed her crew. “Get this from bottom to top, and then top to bottom. Capture a first-person account of climbing up the staircase, no one else in the frame. And time me on the way up. Take a few more runs and get an average of how long it takes to walk it, jog it, and sprint it.”
Sidney followed Darnell up the boulders, the first vigorousportion of the day’s hike. With temperatures in the low nineties and 100 percent humidity, her tank top was soaked by the time she was halfway up the staircase.
A healthy thirty-six-year-old woman in good physical shape, Sidney considered that she was ten years older now than Grace had been when she supposedly made this journey. Sidney needed the aid of the bamboo railing to make it to the top. The steep incline toward the peak required her to grab the bamboo with both hands, one on each side, to hoist herself to the top. Once there, she surveyed the landing and then headed back down. At the foot of the stairs, she grabbed a tripod from one of the crewmembers and extended it to its full length, placed it over her shoulder, and repeated her climb up the boulders with only one hand available to grab the bamboo.
When Sidney was satisfied with her test runs, she found Darnell sitting in the shade of a Lansan. “How much farther?”
“Not much,” Darnell said, pushing himself away from the tree’s trunk. “A few switchbacks.”
She followed Darnell along the narrow dirt path until they made one last turn. Then the foliage cleared and a bluff came into view—smooth beige granite that mirrored the afternoon sun. Sidney walked over to it, already visualizing how she could present this majestic and tragic scene.
“Is this it?” she asked as she walked carefully onto the bluff.
