“We were supposed to come here for a month or two,” I added, “to get away from the media. We’ve been here for almost a year now.”

“We spent four years in the US,” she said defensively.

“That’s different. You liked it there. I’m bored out of my fucking mind here.”

“So why don’t you go back to the Las Vegas, Jack?” she said coldly. “Nobody’s forcing you to stay here in this terrible country. Go. Then you can sit around your house all day there and drink.”

I clenched my jaw but didn’t take the bait.

A sky-wide burst of lightning shattered the night. Ancillary thunder followed.

Rain fell. Wind gusted.

More lightning, more thunder.

“Are we…okay?” Pita asked me eventually.

“Okay?” I said, though I knew what she meant.

“Us. Are we okay?”

I was going to tell her yes, we were fine, we were just going through a rough patch. But what was the point? We both knew the truth.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think we are.”

We didn’t say anything more after that.

3

I didn’t want to think about racing, or Pita, or the fact we had just broken up—which I was pretty sure was what just happened—so I spent the next hour or so considering Miguel’s murder, the mystery killer, the theories we’d come up with thus far. The more I dwelled on this, the more I felt as though we were missing something, overlooking some vital piece of the puzzle.

Miguel’s eyes were not taken by someone doing something stupid in the heat of the moment. Whoever mutilated him—hopefully after he was already dead—was sick and twisted. So the serial killer premise I could buy. What bothered me was the fact the murder occurred here, on this island. Because a murderous sociopath was more often than not the guy next door who had a nine-to-five job, was on a first-name basis with the staff at the local Starbucks, paid taxes, had a mortgage, and waved to you from his car while you walked your kids to school. I’d never heard of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer living as recluses in the wilderness. Jason Voorhees maybe, but we weren’t dealing with an undead dude in a hockey mask. Despite what Pita may believe, there was nothing metaphysical going on. Whoever killed Miguel and injured Lucinda was flesh and blood. They put their pants on one fucking leg at a time.

So what were they doing on this goddamn island?

This line of thinking ultimately brought me back to Solano. He lived out here on his own. He was a crazy bastard. He would have been the obvious suspect, except for the fact he was dead…

I frowned. Sat a bit straighter.

What if he wasn’t dead?