I sighed and jutted out my chin in the direction of the hallway. It gave our witnesses a good look at the colorless crease that slashed across my cheek, stretching from my earlobe all the way to the corner of my mouth. The only benefit of having a scar like mine is related to my work. People assume I’m tough. Good. Let them. Tim didn’t look up as he followed me out of the room.

“The apology was a nice touch,” I said, keeping my voice low.

“You sure you want to talk to this guy alone?” Gone was the face of a cop who’d messed up, the face of a performer. Now Tim looked uneasy. I could hear the others conferring, and I couldn’t shake the image of the blood on the bed. I’d made our objectives, mine and Tim’s, clear. If the Sinclair family had something to hide and hadn’t made a desperate, slapdash attempt at collusion already, they didn’t have much time left. We had to move fast.

“I’ll call you if I need help,” I said. I had no reason to fear Flynn Sinclair, not yet. Tim was just being cautious. But my lungs felt like they were in a vise and my palms were starting to sweat.

“I still think Jasper skipped town,” he said. “But there’s something strange going on here. Is it me, or does it seem like Camilla and Abella are the only ones sad to see that Jasper’s gone? Maybe not everybody goes berserk when a loved one disappears, I’ll give you that—but what does it say about these people that they don’t look remotely upset?” His eyebrows got straighter. “I don’t like it. Watch yourself, okay?”

My gaze traveled back to the seven people in the parlor. This island was their territory, and I felt like an intruder. I didn’t know what awaited me upstairs, or around the corner, or even in the parlor itself.

“Yeah,” I said as I twisted my body to face the stairs. “You too.”

FIVE

I didn’t like him. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t met him yet. The eldest Sinclair sibling hadn’t bothered to come downstairs to hear what we had to say about his brother’s disappearance, and that transported me back to the police boat. It made me feel queasy and ill at ease.

This time when I knocked on the locked door, I got a reply. “Come in,” Flynn said at once. I was about to argue—it’s locked, don’t you know it’s locked?—but when I tried the knob it turned easily in my moist hand.

He sat on the edge of a four-poster bed all the way across the room. When had Flynn unlocked the door? For a moment I wondered if I’d been wrong. Maybe it was just jammed, or sticky with age. Maybe it was never locked at all. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d imagined a locked door. Usually, though, it was me on the other side.

Flynn Sinclair looked nothing like his name, which had a Peter Pan quality, elfish and light on its feet. He was a large man with simian features, a seventies-style mustache, and dense dark hair. From the shape of his shoulders and upper arms, contained by a gray cashmere sweater like you’d wear to Sunday brunch, I could see there was muscle under his mass. My guess was he played football in college and was killing himself fighting the middle-age spread. Flynn didn’t get up to greet me. But he did ask about Jasper.