Slapping at her cheeks to get a little color in them was mostly useless, but Izzy just shrugged at the result. There was no time for anything else—merely passable would have to do.

Some finagling with the local cop who had been manning his desk overnight had gotten her the last address that was on file for Charles Bell. Izzy grabbed the piece of paper on which she’d jotted it down, then swung out the door of the hotel room, finally able to do something beyond sitting there going slowly crazy.

It was early enough that the streets were mostly empty, and the quiet drive gave her too much time to think.

Why had Sammy lied about the body’s identity? And where the hell was Robert Twist, their original victim? Was he still alive?

And if Mia had recognized the person in the morgue, that meant that Peter had been the one to come to the station in the fall, not Robert. That lent credence to the theory that he’d found something in that abandoned house on the Bell land, something connected to Mia.

If he’d told Robert about it, though, why go back? Was he foolish enough to try to solve the mystery himself? Twist had been asking about him, or an artist at least when he’d first gotten there. Peter had even been his last outgoing call.

What Izzy didn’t understand was Sammy’s long-term plan. The state could have sent something back in the full toxicology report; someone who knew Robert Twist could have shown up to claim the body. Rockport could have shipped over the dental records they’d been running.

The only possibility that made sense was that there had been no long-term plan.

Izzy knew it with the same certainty that she’d known Sammy Bowdoin had been pushing the suicide angle way too hard on that first meeting. He’d been casual about it, but even then she’d been able to pick up on it.

A strange thought nipped at her anger, begging for attention, and a tiny part of her, the one that didn’t want Mia to be crushed by even more bad news, suggested that maybe this had been Sammy’s attempt at protecting Mia.

If they’d wrapped up the case quickly, called it suicide, and left, they wouldn’t be in danger from whoever put that body in the bay.

Protect their own. That’s what those islanders did better than anything else. Had Sammy been protecting Mia?

The address for where the Bells had apparently lived fifteen years ago was three turns ahead. It was a modest two story tucked into a row of modest two stories. The contrast was so stark to the decadent mansion perched on the edge of dramatic black cliffs that Izzy actually checked the numbers on the note she’d written herself just to be sure.