“Then again, the Clee girls thought Halsey was to blame,” Jana says. “Brooke Clee said something about protecting a trust fund jerk. She also seemed to think that Paige was still alive and island-hopping with her new, rich friend.”

There’s a sudden muffled sound that startles the others. They turn to see Otto, his mouth chewing on a sizable piece of jerk pork. He holds up a finger, hang on a sec. The group waits, resisting the urge to roll their eyes.

After a small eternity, Otto swallows his food and then speaks. “Paige Ryerson is still alive. I have proof.”

Chapter 19

THE STINGRAYS (continued)

“So you just let us go on and on?” Kate asks. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I was hungry,” Otto says.

Kate’s eyes narrow to a kind of laser-beam focus. Are you jerking us around or what? Otto is the one team member she knows the least, and that worries her. Theo looks angry, too—and those two shared a jail cell for a while. Jana, meanwhile, shakes her head and smiles softly, which is what she always does when she’s frustrated and doesn’t want it to show. She types something on her cell phone.

“Hey,” Otto says when he sees the look on his teammates’ faces, “you guys seemed so excited about all of the hard work you’ve been doing. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Quinn says, “Let’s hear your proof, Otto.”

“Okay. So I spent most of the day impersonating Paige’s older brother. She doesn’t have one, but whatever. Most people don’t know that. I wanted to see if anybody else had eyes on her while she was here. And I found three people who saw Paige Ryerson on three different occasions on three different parts of the island. And this was over the weekend, after the Clee girl first reported her as a missing person.”

“Why didn’t they call the police?” Kate asks.

“They told me they did but never heard anything in response,” Otto says.

Theo frowns. “Who are these witnesses, anyway?”

Otto points at Quinn’s laptop. “I did some quick background checks on all three, and they’re solid citizens. I uploaded it to your secure folder, Matthew. You can do your deep web magic from there, but I’d be shocked if they were anything but legit.”

They all knew that Matthew Quinn was an expert at surfing the so-called deep web, the murky underbelly of the internet that lies beyond search engines and passwords. It is the kind of digital underworld that takes a skilled navigator to operate.

“I’ll check them out,” Quinn says. “What did the witnesses say Paige was doing?”

“They all said she looked like she was feeling no pain—either tipsy or maybe even a little stoned. This is, after all, the tropics, man.”

“And somehow this drunk or possibly stoned girl was able to evade an island-wide search for her?” Kate asks. “Sorry, I’m not buying it.”

“Why would these people lie?” Otto asks. “It’s not as if they came forward with this information on their own. If I hadn’t gone digging, chances are they wouldn’t have told another soul.”