“Justin,” Kelsey whispered. She sounded frightened, and he looked annoyed with himself.

“Listen to me, standing here inventing things to worry about…what matters is that we’re both okay. Let’s not think about it anymore.”

“But you could have been—”

“But I wasn’t.” He smiled down at her, his body relaxing a little. “I guess I owe you another swimming lesson.”

“No, I don’t think so.” His eyes were so blue…so clear…and she couldn’t look away…

“Good-night, then.”

“Good-night.”

She slipped into her nightgown, pulled on her robe, and perched on the edge of her bed. So much had happened…so much that wasn’t right… She had to think.

Her eyes lowered, fell again on the rug at her feet. The stains were still there, lopsided rings of faded dampness, but the seaweed was gone. She stared hard at the spot where it had been, seeing it again in her mind, and she knew with fierce certainty that she hadn’t imagined it. She got down on the floor, crawled slowly from the rug to the door, eyes narrowed and intense. No footprints here. No water marks, no leftover stains…“when I got to your room I didn’t see any seaweed…” When had the other boys gotten to her room? And where had the seaweed been then?

Kelsey crawled back to the rug and started over again, toward the bathroom door.

What she found there turned her cold.

She hadn’t noticed it before—she was positive it hadn’t been there or she’d have stepped on it. But now—now it was lying just beneath the bathroom door—as if someone had tried to push it under and it had snagged—almost hidden, but not quite—just that one matted glob that had started to dry and work its way free and now left a little trail across the floor like a strand of damp hair…

With trembling fingers Kelsey reached out…horrified…touched it…

She jerked her hand back, but the seaweed clung, and she cried out as she tried to fling it off, to unpeel it like dead skin…

The awful thing sailed across the floor, landing with a thud.

Kelsey’s hands flew to her heart, her throat, fluttered to her mouth and finally to her pocket, where they froze as a look of disbelief contorted her face. For suddenly in the far reaches of her mind, she heard Jenny’s voice again over the phone, struggling to get through—“there’s that echo—Kelsey, you sound like you’re in a tunnel or something—that echo!”—and she’d been trying, trying so hard, to tell Jenny about the note, only Jenny hadn’t heard a word she’d said…

But somebody had.

Because when she had hung up the phone, there had been two clicks, not one…

Somebody had listened in and heard everything.

And now the note was gone.

Chapter 13

THE SKY WAS JUST glowing pink when Kelsey slipped out of the cottage. She paused on the steps and slid her arms into her purple windbreaker. She hadn’t heard the footsteps behind her. Now as that shadow took form beside the house, she stifled a scream.