Next Girl to Die

by Dea Poirier

  I consider cutting him some slack until he adds, “Just go back to wherever you came from. We’re better off without you.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is.” I launch the words at him, hoping they’ll put him in his place, but he doesn’t bat an eye.

  “Your whole family is my problem. Boo-hoo, your poor sister. That’s all anyone talks about. What about what her death did to my family? To me?”

  I cross my arms and sigh. Rachel’s interest in Jacob was something I had hoped would stay secret, something I would have taken to my grave if I could have. I’m not sure how he found out or who else knows. Secrets don’t stay buried here.

  “To you? What the hell are you talking about?”

  He snorts a laugh, and his eyes narrow. “Did someone erase your memories when you left the island? Don’t act like you don’t remember spray-painting my car and spreading rumors about me.”

  My mind spins. I never spread rumors about him, and I sure as hell didn’t spray-paint his car. “What are you talking about?”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You seriously don’t remember?”

  “Allen, I had nothing to do with any of that. I hadn’t even heard about it.”

  “Is everything all right?” Noah asks as he pops his head around the doorframe. His brows are furrowed, and he’s holding two foam cups I suspect are filled with coffee.

  He steps around Allen and stands beside me, so close his arm brushes mine. All the tension rushes out of me at once. If he hadn’t shown up, I’m not sure how this would have ended.

  “Everything is fine. I was just leaving.” I take the chance to skirt past Allen and make my way to the door. As I pass Allen, he grinds his teeth together so loudly it makes my teeth ache.

  We exit the station together and turn right toward the parking lot. Night shrouds the island. The moon huddles behind a thick blanket of clouds. Streetlights cast long shadows across the sidewalk. The night is so cold it burrows beneath my clothes. It’s not until I’m in the parking lot with Noah at my side that I’m finally able to take a deep breath. In a few seconds, the uneven beat of my heart steadies, and I look up at the inky sky above us.

  “Thank you,” I say to Noah as I walk to my car. He follows closely and hands me one of the cups he’s holding. The warmth bleeds into me, and for the first time, I realize I’m shivering; I’m unsure if it’s from the cold or the adrenaline still buzzing in my blood.

  “No thanks necessary; I thought you could use some coffee.” He glances toward the door. “Turns out you needed something else.”

  “The way my heart is racing, I don’t think I’ll ever need coffee again.” I chuckle weakly.

  “What was going on back there?” He motions toward the station.

  “Get in. I’ll tell you about it,” I say as I unlock the car doors. The cold of the seats seeps through my pant legs, making goose bumps prickle along my flesh.

  He slides into the car, and I sip my coffee, hoping it will warm me up. I drive the few minutes to my house while I go over what happened with Allen. There’s not much to tell, but I give him a rundown all the same.

  “The last thing I expected was for Allen to jump down my throat,” I say as I pull in to the driveway. I know he’s angry that Ryder tried to kill himself, but I didn’t expect him to take it out on me. The house is dark. With the moonlight spilling across the sharp lines of the old house, it looks haunted. “I think he’s got some pent-up issues from high school. I know part of it was because Rachel was seeing Jacob.” I drink from my coffee cup, then ask, “Why did you head back to the station?”

  A look of recognition flashes in his eyes, as if it just occurred to him that he came back to the station for a reason. “Oh, right. I found another death I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I get the sense it’s going to be a long story, and I want all the information he’s got—among other things. “You want to come in?” I ask.

  He smiles and nods.

  We head into the house. My black couch and end tables are shoved against the back wall, the small coffee table in front of the couch. A vase of tulips sits in the middle of the coffee table. A lacy tablecloth I’ve never seen before covers the table in the dining room, and a vase filled with lilies sits atop it. That’s not a touch I expected the movers to add; I’m not much of a flower person.

  “Nice place,” he says like he’s somewhat surprised.

  “Thanks. You want anything?” I ask as I go to the kitchen to grab myself a bottle of water.

  “No, I’m fine,” he says after a long pause.

  “So what have you found?” I ask as I sit on the couch and sip my water.

  Noah takes a seat at the other end of the couch and turns toward me. I wish he were closer, but I push the thought from my mind. Stop it, Claire.

  “While researching Vinalhaven to look for other clues and to see if there were any other deaths linked to Rachel’s, I found something else that sparked my attention, if you don’t want to count the six that were found in the bay. A girl who drowned in the midseventies.”

  “Drowned?” I ask. I hadn’t heard of anyone drowning on the island in the seventies. Even if a death like that was accidental, I’m sure I would have heard of it growing up at some point.

  He makes a face that tells me he doesn’t think a drowning is the full story.

  “Aha, so you think the drowning is covering for something else.”

  “They could have also just mistaken a murder for an accidental drowning. Things were different back then. Their ability to investigate homicides was so limited. They could have easily assumed it was a tragic accident when it was a homicide, especially if nothing like that had ever happened on the island before.”

  Could that really be the case? If the first murder happened in the midseventies, that would mean that murders have been occurring on the island for over forty years. The idea that someone could have been hunting down victims and hiding murders for that long terrifies and sickens me.

  “Who was the victim?” I ask after silence has grown between us for a long time.

  “That I don’t know yet. Everything I’ve found—which is very little—has just mentioned a Jane Doe.”

  “Do we know what she looked like?” I ask.

  He nods. “Blonde, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.”

  Too similar. Could this Jane Doe have been our first victim?

  “I’ll keep looking to see if I can track down her identity or any clues as to who she was.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Have you found anything else?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve been asking a lot of questions, but instead of getting answers, I’m mainly getting gossip and more information than I’d ever want in my life about this island.”

  I can’t help but laugh at that. “That seems about right.”

  “I’m so glad I didn’t grow up in a small town like this. I can’t even imagine what people would have said about me.”

  “A bad boy, were you?” I ask as I laugh. It’s hard to imagine Noah trying to be a bad boy.

  “I got into my fair share of trouble.” He chuckles. After a few moments of silence, his brows furrow, and he looks toward my front door. “I was hoping I could ask you about Jacob and your sister,” he says, and I nearly flinch.

  “What about them?”

  “How long had she been seeing Jacob?”

  I shrug. “She didn’t tell me when it started. I was the annoying little sister. Eventually Rachel told me she was planning to run away with Jacob because of the baby.” Spilling this information to him feels like a betrayal, even all these years later. I sip my coffee, trying to distract myself from the thoughts. My attention shifts back to Noah.

  He runs his hand through his long hair, and all I can imagine is what it would feel like against my fingers. I wish the thought away as soon as it crosses my mind, but it won’t budge. Being around Noah, I feel like something is slowly building inside me, and if I don’t distance my
self, whatever it is will explode. But I don’t want distance, not even a little.

  My phone vibrates, and I slip it out of my pocket. A text from my mom is waiting on the screen, but I don’t look at it. All I see is the time—it’s almost eleven.

  “Shit, it’s getting late,” I say as I stand up and stretch my legs. I have to get some sleep—the rational part of me knows that. The part of me that wants to drag Noah upstairs, however, is fighting a very loud battle in the back of my mind. Noah would take my mind off of everything in the best and worst ways possible. His shirt is tight over his chest as he gets off the couch, and I can imagine easily how muscular he must be without it. The leather jacket he always wears hangs open and begs for me to lace my arms around his back beneath the material. But I force the thought from my mind.

  “Yeah, I should probably head back to the hotel,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction.

  I walk him to the door, and with every step, I swear I feel the heat building between us, like electricity gathering in the air before lightning strikes. My skin hums at our proximity, and heat rushes to my cheeks. If this is how I feel with a foot between us, I’m not sure I could handle him being any closer. I chew the inside of my cheek at the thought.

  “Thank you again for the coffee, and for being there,” I say, but it doesn’t feel like enough thanks. I owe him—really owe him.

  “No thanks necessary. I may have to make it a habit.” He brushes a stray strand of hair that’s fallen out of my ponytail away from my eyes. His fingers brush my cheek for just a moment, but it’s enough to kick up the embers already swirling inside me. He leans closer, and my heart gallops as my chest tightens. His lips are so close to mine that the heat of his breath warms them. All I want is for his lips to meet mine. Fuck the consequences. The craving for him runs so deep it vibrates in my bones.

  A car horn outside makes us both jump, and he pulls back, the moment shattered. I curse whoever interrupted us. But despite the persistent pulse of desire in my core, maybe it’s for the best. He sighs, and I open the door. He starts to walk past me but stops and presses a feather-light kiss against my cheek. His lips are warm and soft. A bolt of panic and excitement shoots through me at his touch.

  “Good night,” he whispers, and the moment the heat of his breath hits my ear, the tickle of a shiver plays down my spine.

  I close the door and lean against it, trying to get my heart to slow down. I have no idea how much longer I can resist him. For the first time since I got here, this place feels empty, and I wish I weren’t going to bed alone.

  CHAPTER 18

  I didn’t remember to set my alarm, but I’m still up before dawn. From the moment I wake up, thoughts of Noah pool in the back of my mind, but I shove them aside. There are other things I have to focus on.

  The roads are empty as I pull the rental car out of my driveway. As I drive slowly through downtown with the window down, cold morning air hisses against my cheeks. Close to the marina, thick fog oozes off the bay and seeps through the streets. I love seeing the city like this, with the empty streets.

  When I pull in to the parking lot of the police station, Noah is leaning against the building, waiting for me. He’s holding coffee and a bag from the café. Seeing him here, here for me, makes butterflies bloom in the pit of my stomach.

  I hop out of the car, a grin spreading from ear to ear. “I’m starting to think I’ll never have to buy coffee again.”

  “After yesterday, it seems like you’re going to need coffee deliveries more often,” he says, his drawl more pronounced than usual.

  We walk together into the station, and I breathe a sigh of relief that Allen isn’t in. I’ll have to face him eventually, I know, but the longer I can put it off, the better. Maybe once Ryder is discharged from the hospital, Allen will loosen up. He can’t stay pissed at me forever.

  Noah hands me a coffee and a muffin. “I was hoping we could do something in a bit,” he says.

  I rip a piece of my muffin off and pop it in my mouth. “Oh?”

  “I’ve been taking walks along the beach since I got here. Will you come with me later?”

  “You like long walks on the beach?” I ask, and I can’t help smiling. “I thought writers were supposed to hate clichés.”

  “I would have never known if I hadn’t come here. There weren’t any beaches where I grew up.” He leans back in the chair as he chuckles. “There are beaches in South Carolina, but they’re packed, so I’ve avoided them.”

  “You’ve never spent time at the beach?” I ask, shocked. Growing up on the coast, I’ve spent most of my life within minutes of the beach. Hell, I could see the rocky beach from my bedroom window.

  He shakes his head. “My mom likes skiing on vacation. She hated the water, so she never took us to the beach.”

  “That’s a shame. Of course I’ll go for a walk with you. I need to check the beach near the park anyway.” The guys did a sweep a few days ago, but I always feel better if I do another just to check.

  We finish our breakfast and steer toward the beach on foot. Eyes follow us as we walk through downtown toward the park.

  “It feels like I’m under a microscope here,” he says as we near the beach.

  The rocky shore crunches beneath my feet as I steer us toward the beach closest to the park. Luckily, it’s usually abandoned. It’s not the nice kind of place where you lay out your towel and work on your tan. There isn’t a smooth part of this beach. There’s no white sand. What sand there is, littered with pebbles and tiny shells, is as gray as the sky. It’s impossible to go fifty feet without tripping over driftwood.

  “Yeah, imagine growing up here,” I say sarcastically.

  It’s low tide, so we’ve got much more shore to walk than usual. Foamy waves slip up and down the shore, swallowing our footsteps as we walk. The hiss of the water is soothing, the slow inhale and exhale of the sea. Our feet crunch across the tiny shells scattered on the rocky shore. Being out here puts me at ease, like maybe the waves will wash away all my problems.

  “I can see why you come out here. This is what I missed the most about this place.”

  “Miss the most? What else did you miss?”

  Rachel.

  I consider that for a moment, but I really can’t think of anything else. “I guess this is it, actually.” The thought weighs on me. I shouldn’t have come back.

  “What’s your favorite memory of living here?” he asks.

  I don’t even have to think about it. It’s one of my favorite memories of Rachel. “My first month of high school was bad. Looking back, the problems were stupid. But they all just kinda piled up at once. My boyfriend broke up with me. I failed three tests. Someone was spreading rumors about me—basically I would have rather drowned myself in the bay than spend another minute on the island. Rachel had just gotten her license. She talked Mom into letting us skip school and take the ferry so we could go to the mall in Bangor. There’d been a wall between us since Rachel turned twelve, but that day, it came down, and she was my sister again.” The knife that’s been in my heart since she died twists at the memory. What would she be like today? Would we be close? Maybe she’d be married, and I’d be an aunt.

  “She sounds like she was great,” he says as he squeezes my hand.

  “When she wanted to be. Those years were really tough on both of us.” My survivor’s guilt is uniquely defined by the number of times I wished my sister were dead when I was fifteen. It’s normal. That’s what the shrink told me. Everyone wishes someone were dead when they’re a teen. The difference is most of them don’t wake up with a dead sister.

  “It’s still tough with my brothers, but I can’t imagine losing one of them,” he says, squeezing my hand gently. The warmth of him bleeds into me, comforting me.

  “Tell me about your brothers?”

  He looks out over the water, and his brows knit together. “There’s not much to say.”

  Why doesn’t he want to talk about them? Something about it doesn�
�t sit right with me. “Why not?”

  He looks out over the rolling waves. “I’m just not close to my family anymore. I don’t fit into the family, and they don’t want me to. I try not to think about them.” There’s an edge to his voice, but it’s clear it’s not directed at me.

  “How many do you have?” I ask. I won’t ask details about them if he doesn’t want to discuss it, but I’d like to know more about him.

  “Three,” he says.

  As we walk along the beach, something pale, almost bluish, catches my eye, the flicker of fabric caught in the pull of the waves. My mind screams to a halt. Is that a body?

  I drop Noah’s hand and run toward it. But as I get closer, my pounding heart steadies. It’s just sun-bleached driftwood with a ripped pillowcase caught in the branches.

  “Jesus,” I breathe. “I thought it was a body,” I explain as Noah jogs up beside me.

  “It’s the color of one,” he says. “Is that a shirt?”

  “I think it’s a pillowcase. I’m going to have it bagged just in case.” The killer is using something to cover the victim’s faces. Though we found a pillowcase at the scene with Madeline’s body, to my knowledge none was ever found for Emma’s murder. Could this be it?

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I nearly jump. I grab the phone and unlock it. “Detective Calderwood.”

  “This is Tim Armstrong with the coast guard. Sergeant Michaels gave me your cell.”

  “How can I help you?” I ask as goose bumps prickle the back of my neck.

  “We found a boat, and your sergeant said to call you about it,” he explains. The man’s words are clipped, like he’s rushed.

  “What boat?”

  “The name on the hull is School Marmalade.” That’s Paul’s boat. There’s a long pause that makes my stomach churn. Something rustles on the other end of the line. “I think you need to get out here with a CSI team, though. We can’t tow this back to Vinalhaven.”

  A CSI team? My heart pounds, and my mind swims with all the horrible possibilities. Is there another girl on the boat? “Why? What happened?” Deep down, I know why. But I need to hear him say it.