The crowd, already panicked, screamed louder. Smoke and dust filled the air. Candy stumbled backward, coughing. Torie reached for her, but Candy shoved her hand away, face pale. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m trying to help,” Torie said.
Candy turned and ran, guitar clutched to her chest, vanishing toward the overlook path behind the hangar. Torie followed.
The next flash of lightning came a minute later, illuminating the overlook for the briefest moment.
Candy was gone. In her place, a silver ribbon floated in the wind in a flash of light . . . before that, too, disappeared.
And when there was a quick headcount, someone else was missing. Not a tourist. Not a drunk who’d wandered to the bathroom. One of their own.
Efrain stepped forward and raised his voice above the chaos, organizing people, getting them into the hangar and under the awnings, and calling for headcounts. Deputy Ciscel jogged over from the parking area to help, radio in hand, face tight but movements efficient, checking doors and shouting for anyone still outside the hangar.
Candy still didn’t return. Cass shouted Harmony’s name. Voices overlapped. No one could keep track of anyone for long.
Harmony finally found Cass near the hangar wall, lit faintly by a bobbing flashlight. Cass had lost her smile.
“Has anyone found Candy yet?” Cass asked.
“No.” Harmony’s voice was tight. “It’s too calm. It feels like we’re in the eye of the storm.”
Torie appeared out of the dark, arms wrapped around herself. She looked wild and desperate. “She’ll come back. She needed to get away, that’s all.”
Harmony spoke in a low, calming voice. “Sure.”
Torie swallowed hard. “You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you believe yourself,” Harmony said.
Torie’s jaw clenched. “You think I’d hurt her?”
Harmony’s answer was gentle, but it cut. “Maybe you already have.”
Silence fell heavy around them. Cass leaned back against the wall, her whole body shaking. No one knew what to think. The weather had turned without warning.
And now, someone had vanished into the dark—and wasn’t coming back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
What the Island Keeps
The rain kept hammering the diner like fists. Everyone who could be accounted for had crowded inside. The world beyond the windows had dissolved into black and silver—lightning ripping open the sky, thunder rattling the glass. Inside, voices climbed from confusion to fear as people shouted over one another.
Harmony moved through the crush of bodies to the open door, hair dripping, clothes plastered to her skin. “Candy!” she called into the wind, but her voice was swallowed by the storm. The runway had dissolved into a smear of rain and mud, the lights dead, the sound of the sea rising from far below the cliffs.
Cass moved up beside her, soaked and shivering. “She was so happy, playing for us, Harm. Where is she?”
“We need to find Candy,” Harmony yelled back. “Let’s split up—”
Torie stumbled from the darkness, mascara streaked, a sandal missing. “She ran away. She said she needed air. I told her not to go.”
Tosh appeared, jaw tight. “You let her leave?”
“I didn’tlether do anything,” Torie snapped. “She ran. I tried to stop her.” Her eyes flicked toward the ridge, now only visible in flashes of lightning. “It’s not my fault she wouldn’t listen.”
A jagged bolt split the sky, lighting the entire airfield for a heartbeat. Everyone froze. Thunder hit so close it felt alive. The power was out; the world existed only in short, violent bursts. In that instant, Harmony saw it all—Torie shaking; Cass so pale she looked translucent; Tosh a live wire ready to snap; Mary carved from stone; Zach gripped his flashlight like a weapon.
Mary stepped forward, her wrap plastered to her shoulders. “We need to move. Now. We’ll be trapped up here if we don’t. The roads could wash out.” Efrain stepped beside her, trying to herd people into something like order.
