She stared at the ashes. If they were right about what had happened here, she wouldn’t just find burnt items. Reyva clapped a hand on her shoulder. “If you find any dead bodies, try not to scream. Someone might hear.”
“Very helpful,” Claire quipped.
“You want me to search with you?” she offered kindly.
Claire had been the one to say they needed a pot for boiling water and canteens for carrying it. “No, thanks. My idea. I can do this. Besides, one of us does have to keep watch.” She squared her shoulders. Maybe she could find other items that would be useful, like a canoe.You can do this, she thought.You can be useful, instead of weak and pathetic.She never wanted these girls to look at her the way her parents did, as if she were as fragile as glass. “Ifwe get separated, meet up by the dock.”
“Why would we get separated?” Mariana asked.
“Always good to have a plan for that,” Claire said.
“You know, no offense meant, but you keep talking like you know what you’re doing, and I’m not sure you do.”
I definitely don’t know what I’m doing, she thought.
She just hoped what they were doing wasn’t going to get them all killed.
She didn’t start with the house. The odds of finding bodies... Better to start with one of the sheds near the house. As she’d seen yesterday, all of them had burned as well—or more accurately, had been burned. She couldn’t pretend it was an accident. It would be too much of a coincidence, given the body they’d discovered. Obviously the killer was an arsonist as well.
Or... killers?
She didn’t know if it was just one person who had done all this. She didn’t know whether the crimes had happened sequentially or simultaneously. Maybe she could find some sign of—
No. It didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that she focused on the task at hand. Already Mariana was hauling rocks onto the airstrip, arranging them into an SOS, while Reyva patrolled the grounds. The quicker they finished, the quicker they could be away from here.
She was certain they’d be able to convince Mariana to hike to safety. Reyva was on her side, and that made it two to one.Just need a few essential supplies, and we’re off.If she could just stay on task, she could stay okay.
Claire approached a log-cabin-style shed with a collapsed roof. Sorting through the debris, she figured out quickly it was for lawn maintenance equipment:
Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and hedge trimmers, all damaged beyond repair.
Also a wheelbarrow, shears, rakes, and shovels.
She loaded anything that looked remotely useful into the wheelbarrow to be sorted through later, and she carted it outside.
She then raided the next shed. This one had held sports equipment. Much of it had been destroyed by fire—burnt tennis rackets, melted volleyballs, charred croquet mallets. But a set of rusted weights was unharmed. She couldn’t think of a purpose for them at the moment, but anything could be useful if you were inventive about it.
It was like another little puzzle, ideal for keeping her brain from spiraling down a hole, if she didn’t think too hard aboutwhyshe was doing it: invent an alternate purpose for whatever she could salvage. She was eyeing the structural integrity of a rusted and unfortunately empty toolbox, to determine if it would work for boiling water, when she noticed the manhole cover embedded in the floor.
She wouldn’t have seen it if the floor hadn’t been eaten away by fire. The metal disc was beneath the floorboards, but those floorboards were half ash. She pried one back, and it crumbled in her hands. A few more, and she had it exposed.
Not a manhole cover. It looked more like a hatch on a submarine.
A trapdoor.
But a trapdoor that led to... what?
Odd.
Kneeling in the ashes, she located the hinges. Before she could decide whether or not to open it, she heard Reyva call her name.
Claire rushed out. She scanned the charred lawn—but she didn’t see an intruder. Just Reyva, jogging across the grass to her.
“Everything okay?” Reyva asked. “You were in there awhile.”
“Yeah, fine....” Had Reyva been worried about her? More likely, she was just anxious about whether or not she’d find supplies. They didn’t know each other well enough to really care. She glanced back at the shed. “I found a metal toolbox that might work to boil water.”
“Find anything that looks like food?”
