Paolo sighs, then drops to his knees and begins to reluctantly claw at the sand with his bare hands. He’s in no hurry to dig up whatever is down there, so I get down there, too, and start helping. The sand is rough and burns my skin. But I don’t care. The faster I dig, the faster Paolo digs—he’s the kind of guy who can’t help being competitive.

We’re only a foot deep when the smell hits me. There’s no doubt—there’s a corpse right below us.

Chapter 24

THEO (continued)

She’s beneath a plastic tarp, about three feet under. The stench is overwhelming. I take shallow breaths. I’m endlessly creeped out by the knowledge that smell is transmitted by tiny microbes flying through the air and attaching themselves to the olfactory cells in my nose.

In short: I have microscopic pieces of Paige Ryerson’s dead body in my sinuses. I may never forgive Quinn for this.

After I blink the tears out of my eyes, I hold up the flashlight app on my smartphone to take a better look. (Though I would really, really rather not.) Mentally I try to compare the picture of Paige Ryerson to this…being under the tarp. I have a hard time reconciling the two. The girl has been under the sand for over a week now and the elements have not been kind.

“So…we good?” Paolo asks.

“This could be anybody,” I say.

“What, do you think I’d bring you to some random dead body? This is the girl, I’m telling you, man!”

I don’t say anything because I want to see what Paolo does next. Is he going to stick around to see what we learn about the body? Or is he going to flee the island like the guilty little jerk that he is?

I also use my phone to take a series of quick photos and text them to Quinn. (Hey, why should I be the only one having fun?) Quinn must have been waiting by his phone with breathless anticipation, because he pings me back almost instantly.

Need confirmation, he texts.

OK. Tell me how, I reply. After all, I’m no forensic science expert. I’m barely qualified to tell someone if the milk in the fridge has gone bad. Dead bodies are Jana Rose’s weird little hobby.

Look for jewelry, Quinn texts. Specifically a watch and a ring, given to Paige by her parents.

As I peel back the clear plastic tarp, Paolo starts to fidget. “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be touching her, should you? I mean, if it’s a crime scene?”

“You watch too much TV, buddy.” The plastic is cold and clammy under my fingertips. I do wish I’d brought plastic gloves, just like the ones on those TV crime shows I was mocking. But on the corpse’s left wrist is indeed a sensible Marc Jacobs watch—the kind of watch proud, middle-class parents might buy for their daughter at the end of an outstanding academic year. I snap a photo and text it to Quinn.