CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lennox
What an amazing event to be a part of.
The school spirit, the joy, the community—it was all overwhelming and wonderful in the best possible ways.
My heart swelled each time I walked past a group of kids giggling, or dancing, or playing with bubbles.
A gaggle of seventh graders cajoled me into a pool noodle duel, but somehow my teammates were lured onto the other side, and five pre-teens were beating me with pool noodles as I cried for mercy in between fits of laughter.
I kept scanning the field in search of Naomi, but couldn’t find her. Finally, after excusing myself from yet another group of parents who wanted to talk my ear off, I found Gabrielle. “Do you know where Naomi went?” I asked.
She glanced at her smartwatch. “She ran home to get dry clothes and shoes for Austin, but she should have been back by now. That was over an hour ago. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere.”
As if summoned by the mere mention of his name, a wet-looking Austin came jogging up to us. I could hear the water in his shoes seconds before he reached us. “Have you seen my mom?”
“She’s not back yet?” Gabrielle asked, concern creasing the space between her brows. She wore brown-lensed aviator sunglasses, and I could see her eyes shifting across the field.
Pulling out my phone, I didn’t bother ing her, but called her instead. It went to voicemail.
Gabrielle did the same. Same result.
Unease slithered through me like a serpent, coiling and suffocating.
Raina ran up. “You guys seen Nay? Honor was looking for her. Apparently, she’s got a bit of an upset tummy. Too much sugar, I assume.”
“She ran home to get me dry clothes,” Austin said.
“But she’s not answering her phone. She should have been back by now.” Gabrielle shoved her sunglasses up into her hair. “The Find My Friend app has her phone traveling.”
“That’s good, right?” Raina said.
Danica, with her arm around a sick-looking Honor, joined us. “You guys seen Nay?”
“No. Her phone has stopped moving,” Gabrielle said. “But it’s on a stretch of road with nothing. What the hell?”
My phone vibrated in my palm.
“It’s Naomi,” I said. That serpent, with its body squeezing tighter around my insides, relaxed a bit.
I can’t do this. We can’t be together. I don’t love you. I never have. It’s over. We’re over.
“What the f—”
Gabrielle snatched my phone from my hand and read the text. “What the fuck?”
She tried calling her again from my phone. Once again, it went to voicemail.
Gabrielle handed me back my phone, and I shot off a reply.
What are you talking about? Are you okay? Please call me. Where are you?
“Her location is gone,” Gabrielle said, staring at the screen of her phone. “She just … disappeared.”
“Do you think her phone died?” Danica asked. “Or she turned it off?”
Now that creature slithering through me squeezed tighter than ever. Crushing and cutting off circulation.
Then, the answer that we were looking for, but also dreading, came to us via phone call.
My phone rang, and Dawn’s smiling face appeared on the screen. I already knew the answer before I even connected the call.
“Honey,” Dawn said, not even letting me say hello. I put it on speaker. “Kyla failed to check in with her PO. Her sister hasn’t seen her in four days.”
Naomi’s cousins and kids all gasped.
“I’ll book the soonest flight I can. You and Mabel shouldn’t be alone until she’s caught. They have a nationwide warrant out for her arrest because they know she is probably on her way to find you and Mabel.”
I swallowed past the spiky lump in my throat. “I think she might already be here.”
“What?”
“We can’t find or get ahold of Naomi.”
“Oh, honey—”
“I can’t talk right now, Dawn. I have to find Naomi.
I have to get to Mabel.” I disconnected the call, but spots clouded my vision.
We’d grown complacent here on this little slice of paradise.
But evil always finds you, no matter what, no matter where.
Especially when people like Jolene Dandy lend it a helping hand.
Gabrielle must have rallied the troops because within seconds Maverick, Jagger, Tom, and the McEvoy fathers came running up to us.
I struggled to form a complete sentence, so Gabrielle gave them the rundown. I had already dialed Mabel’s phone and stepped away.
It rang twice.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Mabel, where are you?”
“At home with Damon. We’re watching Jurassic World and eating ramen. Why?”
I swallowed again and took a deep breath. “Honey, I need you to lock all the doors, draw all the blinds, turn off the television, and hide.”
“Dad, what is going on?”
“We think Kyla might be on the island. We can’t get ahold of Naomi, and Dawn just called to tell me that Kyla’s sister hasn’t seen her in four days and she failed to check in with her PO.”
“TV’s off, Mr. Paul,” Damon said. I could hear the blinds being drawn and footsteps on the hardwood.
“Dad …” Mabel said, her voice suddenly so much younger and smaller than I’d heard in ages.
“I’m on my way, Mabes. Everything is going to be—”
“Don’t say fine. You can’t promise that,” she blurted out.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I was running to my truck now, dodging people and trying to hear my daughter’s voice over the loud music coming from the DJ.
“Keep your phone on. Put it on silent,” I said. “I have to drive now.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
I reached my vehicle in the school parking lot and climbed inside.
Shit, I’d totally forgotten to roll down the windows.
It was an absolute sauna. I dropped all the windows as I peeled out of the parking stall.
I went more than the posted 20 miles per hour speed limit through the school zone.
Hopefully, parents and islanders would forgive me.
“I’m on my way, Mabes,” I said. “I can hear you breathing. You don’t need to answer.
Just box breathe. Try to stay calm.” I couldn’t tell her everything was going to be okay, because she’d yell at me not to promise those kinds of things.
And she was right. I had no idea how this was going to play out.
I could only hope that it would turn out all right. That I’d get to her in time.
All I could think of as I drove across the island toward my house was that at least Mabel wasn’t alone.
She had Damon with her. He would help keep her calm and keep her safe.
He knew this island well, and I was sure if they needed to run, he could get her to safety.
And I needed to believe that the fourteen-year-old with the floppy hair and video game obsession had some life skills.
I didn’t require them to build a shelter and skin a squirrel to keep from starving, just stay hidden until I got there.
But where was Naomi? And how did Kyla know about her? How long had Kyla been on the island?
I was nearly home when the sound of police sirens started up behind me. The red, white, and blue lights flashed in my rear and side mirrors.
Oh no. Not now. Please.
I wasn’t going to pull over. I couldn’t. I’d get home, the cop could follow me, and I’d explain everything. I’d met all four cops on the island, and they would understand. Hopefully.
My driveway came into view, and with the cop eating up the distance between us, I turned left and raced past Maz’s chickens, startling them into a flurry of flapping feathers. Thankfully, neither Maz nor his wife were out in the yard to shake a fist at me.
The cop was right behind me now.
I hit the button for the gate, but it took too long to open, so I just put the truck in park
and bailed out, the engine still running, the door still open.
“Mr. Paul!” hollered Officer Everett Jacobs.
“I’m sorry,” I yelled back at him, bounding up the porch steps.
“Jagger called me. I’m here to help.” He raced after me and met me at the front door just as I finished punching in the code and turning the handle.
I burst inside. “Mabel?”
“Mabel?” Officer Jacobs called.
“Mabel?” I said again, panic making my voice quaver.
My phone vibrated, and I checked it.
We’re in the woods. I can see you. She came here. We ran.
“They’re out in the woods,” I said to Everett, the two of us heading back out the front door and around the side of the house. “Mabel?”
“Here,” she said, followed by the sound of cracking twigs and crunching leaves as she and Damon emerged from the dense wooded area behind our house.
Mabel had her weighted blanket over her shoulders, and Damon had his arm around her.
I could tell my daughter had either had, or been in the middle of having, an anxiety attack.
Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, and fear was written all over her face.
She ditched the blanket and ran to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. I held her tight, burying my face in her hair.
“You’re okay?” I asked. “She didn’t see you?”
She shook her head against my chest. “No. She …”
“She had a lockpick, and she managed to get into the house, but we had already run out here,” Damon finished. “She spent a bit of time in the house, rummaging around. I’m not sure if she did anything or took anything. We’ve been out here for about five minutes.”
“Then she left?” Everett asked. “Did you see her car? Did you see anybody in it?”
Damon shook his head. “We didn’t see anybody in the car, no. She probably parked on the road and slipped through the gate.”
I pressed a kiss to the top of Mabel’s head. “You’re okay, Mabes. You’re okay.” She tightened her grip on me, and I tightened mine. One of her hands snaked up between us though and she started to gently stroke my scar.
“All units be on the lookout for a forty-three-year-old woman, red hair, driving a silver Ford Focus. She is armed and dangerous,” came the radio from Everett’s chest. “We have video surveillance of her using a taser on Naomi Geuer and loading her into her car. Ferry transportation staff have been notified. We have initiated an island-wide search for Ms. Geuer and the redheaded woman.”
“Red hair?” I asked, turning to the cop. “Kyla is blonde.”
“The video surveillance has her as a redhead,” he said.
She must have dyed it to help hide her appearance.
“Wait, she used a taser on my aunt?” Damon exclaimed.
“Wh-where did she take Naomi?” Mabel asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I need to find her.” I went to peel away from Mabel, but she clung to me like a baby koala, her finger still on my lip scar.
“Don’t go.”
Damon stepped toward us. “I’ve got you.”
She glanced at him, hesitated for a moment, then released me and went to him.
I turned to Everett. “We have to find Naomi. I don’t even know how Kyla knew about her.”
My phone vibrated again, and this time it was a text with an attached video from Gabrielle.
The footage was from not too long ago at Naomi’s house.
A silver Ford Focus pulled onto the property and headed toward Naomi’s cabin.
Then the next link was to the camera at her front door where …
ice filled my veins as I watched Kyla get out of the Focus.
Naomi opened the door and a moment later fell like a toppled tree.
What happened after that was even more difficult to watch.
With absolutely no care for her body or head at all, Kyla dragged Naomi toward the rear of her sedan, popped the trunk, and tossed her inside.
“Dad?” Mabel said, her arms around Damon, her cheek to his chest, and voice really small. “You should look at the video surveillance of our house.”
She was right.
Even though I wanted to be searching for Naomi with the rest of the island, nobody here knew Kyla better than I did, even if I’d done everything in my pre-teen power to not learn anything about her.
I found the footage of her coming to the house.
Since we’d built the gate, she had to park on the outside of it, then slip through a thin space by one of the posts.
Then we saw her picking the lock and entering.
We didn’t have cameras in the house, and I wasn’t ready to go inside and see what she’d done or taken.
Was this her first time here? If she’d been on the island since this afternoon, maybe she came by the house earlier when nobody was home. I went back further in the day to when Naomi and I met up for our little lunch hour rendezvous.
I skipped past the part where our bodies crashed together in the driveway and I backed her up to the door. The kids didn’t need to see that.
While we were inside, the driveway remained empty, except for a bird or a butterfly.
Then there was movement.
Not a car, but a person, walking down the gravel toward the house.
“That’s the same woman,” Damon said. “That’s Kyla.”
All I could do was nod as I watched her stride into the frame.
She approached from the side, almost like she was sticking to the blind spots of the cameras, but not quite. She probably didn’t know about them.
She didn’t go to the door, but around the side of the house to where my bedroom window was. And I knew for a fact that the blinds stayed open because all I could see out my window were trees.
Shit.
I didn’t even have to ask myself the question. Kyla saw Naomi and me together. Then she must have followed Naomi home; that’s how she knew where she lived.
“I need to go find her,” I said, heading back up the hill toward the driveway.
“We’re coming with you,” Mabel said, letting go of Damon and chasing after me.
I stopped midway up the hill. “Mabes—”
“I’m not taking my eyes off you,” she said, the scared child part of her gone; now she meant business. “I’m coming.”
I glanced at Damon, who merely shrugged. Everett caught up with me. “I need to join the search party.”
“Get in,” I said to Mabel and Damon.
They hopped into my still-running truck, and we followed Officer Jacobs back onto the road, realizing only when I glanced into my rearview mirror that my front door was wide open.
I’d deal with that later. Right now, I needed to find Naomi before Kyla did something I’d never be able to forgive myself for.