“Clio, look at theirbodies.” I’m holding the paper up so close to her face that she has to ease it back. “This is how they stand and walk, and their body shapes match them too much. God, this can’t be a coincidence.”
“Adelaide, don’t jump to conclusions. Deep breath.”
“You know me and that I pay attention. I read people.” My hands are shaking.
“I know you do, but?—”
“It’s them.”
“We can’t see their faces.”
“I’m telling you, it’s them.”
She takes a long, slow intake of breath, while I’m squeezing her forearm hard enough that she winces, and I make myself let go.
“Okay,” she whispers. “I hear you, and I’m with you. Breathe with me.”
Malia has noticed us now. She’s glancing over with her head slightly tilted, curious.
“Girls,” she says. “Why are we whispering?”
Clio smiles at her, brittle, and turns back to me. “Ask her.”
“Malia.” My voice is quivering. “Does the article say anything about who they are? The men. In the photo.”
Malia nods, slowly, and steps closer. She takes the paper from me and runs her finger down the margin, where I hadn’t noticed there was dense, small-print text I’d missed.
“Let me see. There was a full column attached. I printed both pages, but the text is on this side.” She flips the paper over. “Ah. Here. The photograph itself was printed as part of an investigative feature on unsolved disappearances on the islands. Rebecca was one of several. The reporter, I don’t remember her name, noted that, according to her sources, the three men in the photograph were believed to be a group known in certain law enforcement circles as the Gravesend Brothers.”
My throat dries, as this is sounding worse by the second.
Malia taps the text. “The reporter writes that they were mercenaries but no one has ever seen their faces. That there were no photographs of them except this supposed one.” She stares closer. “I mean, I swear that looks just like Rebecca. Anyway, she writes that they hadn’t been heard from in over a few months at the time of publication, which would put their last known activity at around a year and a half ago. Some of her sources believed they had retired. Some believed they might have been killed.”
My ears are ringing.
I stare at Clio, and the room tilts.
Clio’s face has gone very still.
They all mentioned having dark pasts they aren’t proud of, ones they don’t want to talk about.
They preempted me, and I thought nothing of it.
I’m suddenly running to the restroom—I see the sign above the doorway—and drop to my knees in front of the toilet, where I get sick, emptying my stomach, my whole body shuddering with it. I grip the edge of the porcelain with both hands and retch again, but nothing comes up because there is nothing left, and I stay there with my forehead resting on my wrist, tears running down my face and dripping off my jaw onto the tile.
Someone’s in the doorway.
“Adelaide.” Her voice is soft, worried. “I’m here.”
“I can’t breathe.”
She kneels behind me and puts a hand on the middle of my back and another in my hair, gathering it away from my face. She doesn’t say anything else for a long time. She just stays there with me while I shake.
Finally, I sit back on my heels and wipe my face with the paper towels she hands me. I flush the toilet, then stand up on legs that don’t feel like mine. She gets up with me, still holding my hair back like I’m seventeen and drunk behind a bleacher.
I splash water on my face at the sink and rinse my mouth. I don’t look at the mirror. I don’t want to see what my face looks like right now.
“You can’t go back there tonight,” she tells me.
