Vanessa’s voice fills the kitchen, breathless and trembling.
“Kara, honey, I don’t know what they’re telling you, but you need to remember who actually knows you. Who stayed. Who believed you when everyone else thought you were losing it.”
A pause.
Then softer.
“You always come back to me. You know you do.”
Kara closes her eyes. Vanessa’s voice drops.
“And if that man thinks he can take my girl from me, he has no idea what I’m willing to do.”
The message ends.
For three seconds, there is no sound except the marsh wind tapping something against the back window.
Then Rafi speaks from the laptop.
“Her phone just pinged off a tower in Sunbreak Harbor.”
Sloane turns toward the door. I pull Kara behind me before I decide to. This time she does not object.
Rafi’s voice is grim.
“She’s definitely on the island.”
Chapter 19
Kara
She’s definitely on the island.The words do not make sense at first. They should. They are small ordinary words. Words a person might say about someone arriving for vacation, or a dinner reservation, or a weekend visit. But Vanessa is not supposed to be here.
Vanessa is supposed to be in Orlando busy at her restaurant. I can imagine her worried and texting too much. Not here. Not close enough to photograph me on Cole’s boat.
My body understands before my heart does. My heart is afraid … of absolutely breaking into pieces. I hear Sloane speaking. Rafi on the laptop. Cole beside me, his body angled between me and the door like Vanessa might walk through it at any second. Maybe she could. She could already be outside.
“Lock down the inn,” Sloane says into his phone. “Quietly, without panic. I want eyes on the office, both exits, and the service road.”
Rafi’s voice comes through the laptop. “I’m trying to narrow the tower sector. She’s moving or the signal bounced. Hard to tell.”
“Find out,” Sloane says.
Cole’s hand brushes my elbow.
“Kara.”
I look at him. His face is controlled, but his eyes are not. The fury is still there, banked under discipline. Maybe that should frighten me. It doesn’t.
“What do you need?” he asks.
The question breaks something in me because I do not know the answer. My best friend is on the island. She may be behind all of this including breaking into my house and standing in the dunes taking photos while I sat on the porch like prey behind a screen. My best friend may have been the ghost haunting me since culinary school.
What do I need? A different truth. A rewind button.
“I need to understand,” I say.
Cole’s mouth tightens. “That may not happen today.”
