It was rougher out than I expected, and I’d expected rough. Under the water, shoals lay in wait, their teeth big enough to tear through boats as if they were made of matchsticks. When we entered the channel I felt the current’s fierce pull. The channel was for freighters bringing Canadian wheat and iron ore from the Great Lakes over to Europe, but there were no tankers on the water today. No other boats at all.

We were halfway there before Tim revealed our destination. Tern Island, on the U.S. side. This island wasn’t open to the public like Wellesley (American) or Wolfe (Canadian), but privately owned.

“You told them to stay put, right? Not to disturb the scene?” I shouted over the shriek of the wind. In my old job, the scene of the crime was never more than ten minutes away. The fact that our cruiser could scream out of the parking lot and bully its way through the streets like a tank was a source of pride to me, but getting to an island isn’t something you can rush. Thinking about all the things the people on it could get up to before we arrived filled me with dread.

Tim laughed. “They’ve only got one boat in the water, and it’s a skiff—a little motorboat for getting back and forth from shore. It’d take three trips to transport everyone to the mainland, and they’d be crazy to do it now. Don’t you feel it? The swell of the water?” he said. “The currents are insane. Anyway, it’s just up here, past Deer Island.”

Deer Island. That was another one I’d heard about from Carson. It had once been a retreat for a Yale secret society called Skull and Bones; now its dense trees and derelict lodge made it look as sinister as a horror-movie set. A chill danced up my spine as we raced past it, but the landmass quickly disappeared, sucked back into the fog.

I’d been bracing myself against the knocks and jolts of our boat in the choppy water, but wasn’t prepared when Tim shouted, “Shit! Hang on!” He jerked the wheel to dodge a near-invisible shoal, and I barely managed to avoid tumbling overboard as a wave breached the gunwale, dousing me with icy water. The skin on my thighs burned and my pulse pounded in my ears. Along with the storm, the sound was deafening.

“Not a great place to take a life if you hope to keep your freedom.” I dug my fingernails into the back of Tim’s leather seat. “Why here? Why now, when it’s so hard to get away?”

“You’re thinking suicide, then,” Tim said.

Like me, he was remembering the caretaker’s report. How the missing man’s family was tucked in bed all night. Now, I’m not prone to churning out conjecture like assembly-line muffins. I like my theories fully baked before I share them with a partner. But this guy’s disappearance, and the caretaker’s call, and the timing of it all was strange, and I wanted to know what was going on inside Tim’s head. “Stabs himself next to his girlfriend and stumbles over a cliff? It could happen,” I said.