Chapter Eleven
By the time the perimeter sweep was done, Asa’s fingers burned from the cold.
The snowstorm had settled into a steady, relentless fall of thick flakes spinning under the porch light, collecting on the railing and the narrow lane, softening the world into a blur of white and shadow.
The cottage on the west bluff looked pretty from the outside, the kind of scene tourists used for Christmas cards.
It didn’t feel pretty. It felt like a target.
JT finished checking the back corner and trudged up the porch steps, boots shedding snow. “The fence line’s intact,” he said. “No footprints except ours. Trees are far enough back. I don’t love it, but at least a shooter would have to work for it.”
“Work isn’t exactly a deterrent for this guy,” Asa said, scanning the darkness beyond the property.
JT huffed a breath. “I’m choosing to believe even psychopaths appreciate a challenge.” He jerked his chin toward the lane. “Will’s still parked at the top. He’s rotating a patrol car every few hours, but he’s staying put until morning.”
“Good. If the killer wants to get near the house, he’ll have to find his way past Kelly or circle through the woods. Either way, we’ll hear him.”
JT eyed him. “When was the last time you slept?”
Asa glanced at his watch. “Define slept.”
“That’s what I thought.” JT clapped a gloved hand on his shoulder. “Rachel has Maya drinking decaf coffee and pretending to eat. Go inside before you turn into a snowman and join her. I’ll take the first outside rotation with Will. You get warm and try not to brood all over her.”
“I don’t brood,” Asa said.
JT snorted. “You’re brooding right now.”
“Go bother Will,” Asa told him, but a corner of his mouth lifted at JT’s ribbing. He liked the founder of Hope Island Securities a lot. The two had quickly formed a friendship that Asa hoped would prove lasting, no matter the outcome of this case.
JT headed down the lane toward the patrol car, whistling something off-key just to prove he wasn’t rattled. Asa watched until Will Kelly leaned out the window and flipped JT a mock salute, their silhouettes briefly illuminated in the cruiser’s light. Then Asa turned and opened the cottage door.
Warmth hit him like a wall. So did the smell of grilled cheese and coffee and woodsmoke.
Rachel stood at the tiny stove, flipping a sandwich in a pan, her hair pulled into a messy knot at the nape of her neck.
Maya was on the couch with a blanket draped over her legs, both hands wrapped around a mug.
She looked up when he stepped in.
For a moment, the tightness in his chest eased.
“You’re freezing,” she said. “Your face is actually blue.”
“Adds character.” Asa shut the door behind him and stomped snow from his boots.
Rachel glanced over. “Any new footprints? Creepy snow messages? Shadowy figures holding knives?”
“Nothing yet,” Asa said. “JT’s with Will at the road. Perimeter’s clear—for now.”
“Good.” Rachel slid the sandwich onto a plate and cut it in half with unnecessary precision. “Then you can sit and eat. Yes, that’s an order.”
“I’m more hungry for coffee than food at the moment.”
“Asa.” Rachel handed him the plate. “If you fall over from low blood sugar in the middle of a crisis, I’ll never let you live it down.”
He took the plate because arguing would waste more time. “Fine. Half.”
She smirked. “That’s progress.”
Asa moved to the couch and sat on the edge near Maya, careful to leave enough space that she didn’t feel crowded but close enough to see her face.
She’d tucked her legs under the blanket, socks mismatched, hair still damp from a shower she’d taken earlier.
Her eyes looked too big in her pale face, but there was a steadiness there that hadn’t been present at the barn.
“How are you doing?” he asked quietly.
She shrugged one shoulder, fingers tightening around the mug. “Measuring my success by how many breaths I take without wanting to throw up.”
“That’s actually a decent metric.”
“I’m at . . . maybe fifty percent.”
“That’s up from earlier,” he said. “We’ll take it.”
She huffed a tiny laugh.
Rachel placed a mug of coffee on the table.
“That’s the real deal for you. No decaf.
I need you to be alert.” She disappeared into the kitchen and busied herself wiping down the counters.
She was deliberately giving them space while staying within earshot.
Asa took a bite of the sandwich to keep her off his back, then set the plate on the coffee table.
“I talked to Will about the dispatcher,” he said. “We’ve got a name at least.”
Maya’s gaze sharpened. “You do? Who?”
“Margaret Cormier,” Asa said. “She worked as the dispatcher back then. Two months after my dad’s murder, she left. No forwarding address. She just left the force and disappeared.”
Maya’s fingers tightened on the mug. “Like she was running from something.”
“Or someone,” Asa said. “Will pulled old HR files. She didn’t have family on the island. No disciplinary actions. Good record. Then—gone. Margaret had to be the one who put out the ‘loose ends at the Hardesty barn’ call that night.”
“And then she disappeared.” Maya sighed. “Do you think he scared her off? Threatened her like he did you and me?”
“It’s possible,” Asa said.
Rachel slid the grilled cheese Maya had barely touched closer. “Eat,” she ordered. “Therapy and homicide talk work better with carbs.”
Maya managed a faint smile before her eyes drifted to the fire, the flames reflecting in their depths.
“I remember being in a small boat,” she said softly.
“I sat in my mom’s lap. She held me tight.
Someone else must have been there steering the boat, but I can’t see them.
I can feel my mother’s hand on my hair, smell her perfume.
There’s wind. Water. The boat motor is loud—it drowns almost everything else out. ”
“You’re on your way to the island?” Asa prompted, keeping his tone light.
She nodded. “It’s dark, but there are pinpricks of light in the distance. I think that’s Hope Island. She keeps telling me, ‘We’re almost there, baby. Almost safe.’” Maya’s voice went hoarse. “She says a man named Raymond promised we would be.”
Asa’s throat tightened. “My father. He must have spoken to her before she came over. Maybe through Margaret. Maybe directly.”
“She trusted him,” Maya whispered. “I can hear it in her voice. She’s terrified, but when she says his name, it’s like she’s found something solid to hold on to.”
“Sounds like him,” Asa said, a bittersweet ache rising behind his ribs. “He had that effect. Especially on people who were in over their heads.”
“What if my mother witnessed something on the mainland? Maybe a murder?” Maya asked. “She might’ve been the only one who could identify the killer. What if that’s why she ran and ended up here?”
“It’s possible.” Asa shook his head. “I’d say we should check my father’s old case files, but the fire destroyed everything from that time.”
“What about his personal possessions?” Maya asked. “Maybe whatever brought them together wasn’t connected to a case here on Hope Island.”
He shrugged. “I’ve gone through everything, all his personal papers. There’s nothing.”
Maya shut her eyes for a moment, as if bracing against a wave.
“What else do you see?” he asked gently. “Just you and your mom on the boat?”
“Yes, there’s no one else. Just us. She’s holding me in her lap because I keep shivering.
I have the rabbit—my rabbit—in my arms. She keeps looking over her shoulder, back toward the dark.
Like she’s afraid someone’s following us, even though I don’t hear anything but the motor and the water.
” Her shoulders tightened. “She whispers, ‘He won’t find us here. Not if we get to Raymond first.’”
Asa’s jaw clenched. Not if we get to Raymond first. So she’d come to his father as a last resort. To the place the killer would least expect her to go.
“Then my memories jump,” Maya said, opening her eyes. “Every time. Straight to the barn. To your father. To the killer’s words.”
Which didn’t make sense. What happened between those two events?
The dispatcher had sent Asa’s father out in the rain to protect Maya and her mother.
Loose ends. Why had she used those particular words?
Asa remembered seeing lights on in the Hardesty house even though no one had lived there in a while.
She swallowed hard. “I’ve tried to back the story up to where my mother was with me in the barn, but nothing.” She shrugged.
“I’m guessing you and your mother must have been staying at the old house near the barn. Do you remember walking from the house to the barn?”
Maya shook her head. “My memory cuts off after the boat ride. Like someone hung up the phone inside my head.”
“We’ll ask Margaret,” Asa said just above a whisper. “When we find her, we’ll ask why she sent my father to the barn.”
“If she’s still alive,” Maya said quietly.
“If she’s not . . .” Asa forced the words through the tightness in his throat. “Then we find anyone she might have told. Family. Friends. A supervisor. Somebody knows why she ran.”
Maya stared into the curl of steam above her mug. “What if I never remember my mother’s name? What if all I ever know about her is how afraid she was?”
“Then we find out who she was some other way,” Asa said. “Through people who knew her, records she left. Through the choices she made to protect you. She was more than her fear, Maya. You are, too.”
She let out a shaky sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “You always say things like you actually believe them.”
“I do,” he said simply.
Silence settled for a moment, companionable and tense all at once. The heater hummed. Something in the kitchen ticked. Outside, the wind rattled a bare branch against the siding.
Maya shifted under the blanket. “Do you ever wish you had just . . . forgotten? Like he told you to?”
He didn’t have to ask who “he” was.