Aunt Esther rammed the boat onto the shore, and they all climbed in. She didn’t wait to greet the figure in gray, didn’t seem to care who it was. She backed the boat away from North Brother Island and sped away as fast as she could.

But Tess turned to watch the shore. As she stared, the figure lowered her hood, exposing the beautiful—and familiar—face beneath.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Cricket

While Tess, Theo, and Jaime were hurtling away from North Brother Island in Aunt Esther’s borrowed solarboat, Zelda “Cricket” Moran was hurtling exactly nowhere. She was sitting in the middle of her blush-pink bed in the middle of her blush-pink room, staring at the mural she made the very first day she’d arrived here. Just this morning, she’d added a picture of Karl to it, eating his favorite snack. But that wasn’t why she was trapped here on a perfectly good day, when she could be out investigating. No, her mother seemed to understand why she’d painted the picture of Karl on the wall, even if it didn’t match the peachy pink of the paint her mother had chosen for her. “The color of dawn,” her mother said. What her mother didn’t understand, refused to understand, was that this building was filled to the brim with NEFARIOUS ACTORS performing NEFARIOUS DEEDS.

“You’ve been sneaking around, stealing things, drawing all over the walls! The only nefarious deeds being performed in this building are being performed by you!” her father had bellowed at breakfast, red in the face as he always was.

“‘I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean,’” said Cricket. It was a line from her favorite movie. She found it quite useful.

“WHAT?” Her father got redder in the face. Cricket thought he should see a doctor for that. It didn’t look healthy.

“Cricket,” her mother warned. To her husband, she said, “Go easy. She misses Karl.”

Her father seemed about to yell something else, but swallowed the words (words that probably didn’t mean what he thought they meant, either). He heaved a strangled sigh, then put a rough hand on Cricket’s shoulder. “I know. I’m sorry about Karl. I’ll call Detective Biedermann from the office and see if she has any more information, okay?”

Cricket, who had been expecting a fight, felt the tears well up in her eyes. She hated crying. But she did love her dad, as shouty and red as he could be.

“Okay,” she said, barely able to get the words out.