More bad noises down the hall. I heard a glass shatter with spectacular force, a muffled thump. Jade screamed, then Bebe. There were shouts from the men, brayed orders and exclamations of confusion. I turned to go. That’s when I felt a hand in my hair and the agony of a punch delivered with precision to my spleen.

Doubled over and breathless with pain, I reached for my gun, but it was dark and my grasp was unreliable. I was too slow. A hot, clammy hand closed over my mouth, and before I could do a thing about it someone was dragging my aching body across the slate kitchen floor.

TWENTY-NINE

He moved quickly, towing me along like a disobedient child. For a second I thought he was taking me to the basement, felt a kick of terror to match the fire in my gut, but it was Norton’s room he took me to. Then I realized. It was the closest room with a lock.

Inside, he slammed my back against the closed door, wrenched my hands above my head, and pinned his body against mine. I felt him reach behind me to find my weapon. He was trying to yank it free. I bucked under his mass, struggled with all my might, but he raked my burned hand down the wooden door. The tender boil left by the burn ruptured and my skin blazed with pain. He jabbed the muzzle of my firearm under my chin and brought his mouth close to my ear. His voice, when he spoke, was thick with rage. “You let her die,” it said.

The voice belonged to Ned.

In my state of shock I struggled to catch up. It was Flynn I’d been expecting to fight in the dark. I’d shot the man, on top of which he was vicious and unstable, already facing prison time. Flynn had nothing to lose—but Ned? His friend was missing, and all day Ned remained collected. It took Abella’s death to make him snap. Abella and Ned were friends, too, spent all their time together in the city. It was always the three of them there—Jasper, Abella, Ned.

Images of Ned Yeboah hurtled through my mind. Ned, overcome with grief next to Abella’s lifeless body. Holding her hand at lunch, and again in the parlor. Comforting her. Stroking her hair.

Ned was a friend to Abella. But to him, I realized then, she’d been something more. When Ned described his friendship with Jasper to me, he’d omitted a critical point. It wasn’t Ned’s disgust with Flynn that made him desperate to get away from the Sinclairs. It was Abby.

I coughed out a warning. He’d be charged with assaulting a police officer. I wasn’t the only investigator on the island. Ned would be arrested in no time, go to prison.

“You think I care? It doesn’t matter. You left.” Ned’s hot chest heaved against mine. “She’s dead. Abby’s dead because of you.”

“What about you?” I winced as the cold, hard barrel of my gun grazed my throat. “Where were you when she went upstairs to change?”