He heads out the door, his focus taken up by his destination and conversation. He doesn’t look back to see me take the ancient three-hole punch from Irene’s desk and dart beneath the counter to follow.
When I exit the inn, he’s halfway across the parking lot, the phone pressed between his ear and shoulder. He digs his keys from his pocket and unlocks a Honda CR-V parked a few spaces from Nolan’s favorite spot.
“I do trust you, man.” He slows as he nears the vehicle. As soon as the trunk is open, he loads his bag inside, then hurries toward the driver’s door. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says, and then disconnects the call.
No, you fucking won’t, I think as I rush forward.
He doesn’t hear me coming. Doesn’t even turn around. I hit him with every ounce of strength I have, crashing the hole punch into the side of his head with a satisfying whack.
He falls unconscious to the asphalt.
I quickly scan my surroundings. It’s eerily still, only the sound of the ocean rising to meet us. Just a brief breath of calm, and then I’m a frenzied storm of motion. First, I take his phone, running to the nearby cliff edge to toss it and the hole punch into the sea. Next, I take his wallet and keys. Opening the trunk of his vehicle, I grab the bag, along with any other equipment I can find. I have no intention of wasting time I don’t have dragging another limp man here, there, and everywhere. But I can at least make it look like a robbery and take all his expensive gear.
When I’m done, I give the man a quick check. He’s breathing. Blood trickles from his nose. He must have smacked his face hard on the way down. I’m not sure what kind of damage I just caused, and I’m not about to wait around to find out. It could be a while before he awakens, if he ever does. It could be only moments.
I leave him where he is and run to Arthur’s car, pulling away from the Capeside Inn and heading out of town as quickly as I dare with a body in my back seat. The fog grows thicker the farther I go from the sea. It consumes the headlights as I turn down the road that leads to the Lancaster Distillery.
Nolan Rhodes said he would walk through hell to drag me out if I ever tried to run.
But I don’t hide in hell.
I bring it to life.
SQUALLNolan
SAM’S FOOTSTEPS ECHO ACROSS THE space that stretches around us, trapped between the beams of the distillery’s vaulted ceiling. Though I strain against the handcuffs, I don’t make any headway. The metal is flush against my skin. I try twisting my ankles, but that’s useless too, the duct tape wound in thick layers to bind my legs to the chair.
“There’s a great synergy to recording in this place,” Sam says as he brings a long, thin bag over from the mouth of the corridor and pulls a tripod from its interior. He takes a deep, dramatic sigh, inhaling the scent of fresh paint and freshly cut lumber. “Considering it was once the heart of Arthur Lancaster’s empire, interviewing another murderer here in the distillery that Lukas Lancaster is trying to bring back to life is a perfect way to tie all the pieces together. Don’t you think?”
I don’t answer. I have no intention of telling this man shit. Especially not on camera.
Sam smiles. It’s as though he can divine my thoughts right out of my head when he says, “We are going to talk, you and me. Or everything I know about Harper Starling will be thrown into this documentary, and trust me when I say, her life will be blown apart.”
“How do I know you won’t do that anyway, even if I do talk to you?”
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me.” He shrugs, adjusting the tripod and then bending to retrieve his camera bag off a drop cloth. His eyes don’t leave mine any longer than they have to, as though he doesn’t fully trust how thoroughly he’s incapacitated me. “Give me what I want, and I promise I’ll leave her out of it.”
“And what do you want, exactly?”
His smile stretches. “The story of a lifetime, of course. And the recognition I deserve.”
I scoff, and Sam’s eyes narrow to slits of malice. “Recognition? Or do you mean ‘fame’?”
“I mean, acknowledgment. That my group has done what no one else could.” Sam presses a button on one of the black cords that surround him, and two portable studio lights flicker on. I squint against their blinding white glare. “We’ve solved cold cases when the authorities couldn’t. We’ve exposed criminals—”
“And now you’ve become one.” I jostle my wrists behind me, my arms hooked beneath the metal armrests of my chair. “Or did you conveniently forget that there are laws about abducting people at gunpoint and holding them against their will, to name a few?”
Sam approaches me with a wireless lapel microphone clutched in his fingers. He attaches it to my shirt, avoiding my unyielding glare. When he’s done, he returns to the mounted camera, putting his own microphone on before settling a pair of headphones over his ears. “You know, since before I even started the Sleuthseekers, I believed some rules needed to be bent for justice to be fairly served. But of all people in this fucked-up town, I thought that you would agree with that.”
Sam adjusts the lens and buttons on his camera until he seems satisfied with what he’s seeing on the viewfinder, and then he grabs the film slate from the floor. He positions himself between me and the camera, the clapperboard clutched in his hands.
“Action,” he declares, whacking the black-and-white striped arm down onto the body of the slate before he rushes behind the camera, exchanging the clapperboard for his notebook. I wait until he’s looking at the viewfinder before I roll my eyes. “Is your name Nolan Caius Rhodes?”
“You already know my name.”
Sam glares at me from behind the camera. “We can skip right to Harper Starling, if you prefer.”
My blood boils. I strain against the handcuffs. I’m desperate to tear his fucking throat out. To dig my fingers into his flesh and feel it split apart in my grip.
“Yes,” I grit out. “My name is Nolan Caius Rhodes.”
“Where do you live?”
“Gatlinburg, Tennessee.”
“Tell me about what brought you to Cape Carnage?”
I release a heavy sigh, as though this is the most ridiculous fucking thing I’ve ever been forced to endure. “Bird-watching.”
“Bird-watching,” Sam echoes, failing to keep his triumphant smirk from bleeding into his voice. He’s hardly the impartial interviewer, not that I expected any level of professionalism here. “That’s right, Irene mentioned something about that to me. I guess that makes a lot more sense now. Tell me, do you ever observe starlings?”
I cut him with a vicious glare.
“Did you know that a starling can mimic the songs of up to twenty different bird species?” he continues. “They can even impersonate human speech.”
There’s something else behind the slow smile he gives me. Like he holds all the cards. Even the ones I don’t know about.
A suffocating blanket of unease seems to descend around me. “Ask me a relevant question,” I snarl.
“Sure thing.” The false brightness in his tone sets me even more on edge. Sam flips a page in his notebook, tapping a pen to his chin. “Ah, yes. I have a relevant question. Why did you murder Trevor Fisher?”
My lips seal tight.
“What about Dylan Jacobs? Or Marc Beaumont?”
I say nothing.
“Or what about Jake Hornell? Would you happen to know anything about his disappearance on June seventh? Or how about you tell me what you were doing at the Ballantyne River last night? Because it seemed pretty fucking suspicious to me.”
Fuck. I never heard anything. Never saw a light or another car. It was a normal night at the river, except for the fact that Harper wasn’t with me, which I’m so fucking grateful for now. But clearly I wasn’t as alone as I thought.
