“There are other, better funded, more experienced researchers you could have picked. The US isn’t the only country with parapsychology departments—you have the money to fly someone in from Edinburgh or Zurich. As for mediums, Oscar was a complete unknown. He might have turned out to be a fake, or just a little more sensitive to spirits than the average person.”
“Then we would have found someone else. You know this, we discussed it the day we met.”
She wasn’t going to come out and say it. “Again, you could have hired someone with a track record. But I think you looked for a struggling ghost hunting group with a medium so you could dazzle them with your money. Make them indebted entirely to you. Then, if they got out of line, use the threat of withholding that money to keep them under your thumb.”
“A fascinating theory.” She still didn’t look at him. “And what about you?”
“It’s no secret the Institute moved on from survival research decades ago. It hung on as a legacy position, but with budget cuts aimed at anything that doesn’t result in an MBA or a job in tech, my post was on the chopping block. Your grants turned that around.”
“As well as some words in the right ears.” She turned her head slightly, so he could see her patrician profile. “You’re a smart man, Dr. Taylor. If I had my choice, I would have left this island to rot. But with Robin visiting in my dreams, something needed to be done. I refuse to spend my last years haunted. If this damned storm…but no matter.” She faced the front again. “Once it’s blown past, you’ll return and finish things here. I will have my peaceful sleep, you will have your job, and OutFoxing the Paranormal will have unfettered access to whatever gadgets or equipment they need. No one need ever know about the Pack.”
“Did you know, before you came here the first time?”
“No. There was a diary—Gloria showed Robin where it was hidden, after we found the remains. I burned it that very day.” Her mouth tightened. “Robin claimed she’d destroyed the tape we made that night, but clearly she lied to me.”
Damn it. The diary would have been the best evidence. At least she’d missed the ledger, though it was hardly proof of anything, given the shorthand nature of its entries.
“I hope you’re not considering either going to the press or blackmailing me,” Montague added as the golf cart emerged from the ghost forest. “You’ll find that?—”
Her words died, and Ethan let out a gasp. The golf cart rolled to a stop at the foot of the pier, and all three of them stared in horror.
The catamaran was gone.
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
The rising wind tore through the open windows, and unsecured shutters banged all over the house like running footsteps. The rain steadily increased, and thunder growled from somewhere over the Atlantic, growing closer with each boom. The Cottage creaked and moaned under the assault, but it was the best place on the island to ride out the storm.
According to Nigel, the catamaran’s mooring ropes had been untied, the vessel blown away or sunk to the bottom, it was hard to say. No one questioned that Gloria was the culprit.
He finally understood her fury. Horrors had happened here, as attested to by the mass grave. Maybe something equally terrible had happened to her back in Winston-Salem. If she’d been fleeing her father, fallen down the stairs…
Was that why Ullman summoned her ghost? Because she’d escaped him in life, but he was determined to possess her in death?
Either way, she’d been trying to get someone, anyone, to care. To reveal the truth about the men who gathered here, to expose their vile deeds to the light of day. Get some justice for herself and the other victims, however slim.
The Vanderwalls must have found the bodies. They’d sunk all of their funds into making The Cottage into a B&B, though. Any work would have to be put on pause, at least for a little while, so the remains could be investigated. Worse, no guests would want to stay in a place where so many terrible things happened. The Vanderwalls had stood to lose everything, so they kept their discovery to themselves. No doubt they’d hoped to remove the skeletons from the beach before opening to the public.
So Gloria turned against them. Then Robin, Lawson, and Montague arrived, and she tried again. And again, the cover up continued.
Robin paid the ultimate price. Clearly, her spirit wasn’t at rest, wanted to make amends by visiting Ms. Montague in her dreams and urging her to fix things.
Instead, they came here, and once again ignored Gloria. By the time they’d found the mass grave, it was too late. The catamaran was already gone, unleashed to trap them here so Gloria could take out her vengeance on them as she’d done with Robin.
And perhaps Ullman, long before. He’d been furious about people digging into his private business. Had Gloria tormented the Pack after being summoned to the island? If any of Ullman’s friends had been wavering, thinking about confessing their sins, it would have been a good motive to sabotage the boat and kill all of them. Then he shot himself to put an end to any questions. No one would look too closely at a bunch of grieving families—rich families. And if the servants spoke up, they’d only be implicating themselves as accomplices.
Now they were stuck here with an enraged ghost, a storm bearing down on them while they hunkered in a creaky old house that might blow in on top of them for all he knew. They’d tried putting in a call to the coast guard over the satellite phone, but the coasties were busy responding to SOSs from ships caught by the unexpected speed of the storm. So long as they were sheltered and not in imminent danger, they were going to have to wait.
While Montague and Ethan retreated to the trailer to gather anything they didn’t want to risk being blown away, the rest of them trooped back into the dining room. The salt lines had gotten broken when they’d been taking their belongings out earlier, so Oscar stopped to pour fresh ones. As he finished up, Chris said, “Wait—was that here earlier?”
“What?” Oscar turned, salt canister in hand, and saw Chris staring down at an unlabeled VHS tape lying near the middle of the table.
“It’s the tape from earlier—I must have put it there after Dr. Lawson had the chance to watch it.” Nigel took off his glasses and wiped the rain away with his t-shirt.
Chris went to the VCR, which still had power thanks to the generator, and hit the eject button. The unlabeled tape they’d watched earlier popped out. “Nope. It was still in the machine.”
Oscar felt as though he was out in the storm still, cold rainwater running down his spine. “Could Robin have apparated it here?”
