The young woman, barely more than a girl, wearing a hoodie with her hands tucked inside, was watching him. She had headphones on and was regarding him with a strange intensity. He pulled his eyes away, shook off her gaze and continued out of the building.

He didn’t see her follow him to the entrance and watch as he got into the rental car and pulled away.

He didn’t see as she pulled out her phone and took a picture of the license plate.

Chapter Eighteen

Robin’s niggling feeling followed him all the way back to The Hamlet, and when he got back to his room, he found himself looking through his folder of articles. Something Matthew had said had struck something in his memory, something he had read or found or something.

The papers spilled off the desk and onto the floor and Robin cursed under his breath. He knew he wasn’t a detective. He wasn’t used to this kind of stuff. But he had to do this. If he wanted to find out what Matthew knew about Sam.

And wasn’t he invested enough now? Couldn’t he admit it? He needed to know—what had happened to the Standedge Five? And how was this connected to Sam? Because he really couldn’t imagine any scene where Matthew killed his friends, and even if he had, what had happened then?

But he had to prove Matthew wasn’t responsible somehow. And he couldn’t do that without first understanding what actually happened.

Robin scooped up the papers in a clump and threw them on the bed. What he was looking for wasn’t there. He got out his notebook and looked at the notes he had taken during the visit.

He had written ASCEND in bold capitals—gone over it multiple times so it bled through to the next page. It must have looked similar inked onto the five wrists of the Standedge Five. The more he looked at the letters, the less he saw.

He got his laptop out and connected to the Wi-Fi. He found himself scrolling through the same online articles, the same pages, examining the same pictures. He didn’t even know what he was particularly looking for. Ending his journey, he found himself visiting the personal Facebook pages of the Five, not entirely knowing why. He scrolled through the comments of people mourning the lost—hundreds and hundreds of them. Nothing jumped out at him. He randomly went to Rachel Claypath’s About page and scrolled down. A normal young woman.

And then...

He found himself getting closer to the screen.

He opened a new tab and went to Robert Frost’s About page. And then Prudence Pack’s. And then Edmund Sunderland’s. And finally Tim Claypath’s. His niggling felt satisfied. He’d seen it without even knowing he’d seen it.

He popped them all out into different windows and lined them all up.