So Then There Were None

by Annie Adams

  So there we were with no more answers than I’d had before, but the light at the end of the tunnel was a boat waiting to take us away.

  I followed Kourtnee into the hall, and in my elation about the boat, I’d nearly lost my senses. “Wait, what about my stuff?”

  “Alex has it. You guys packed your bags, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yeah, we did.”

  It occurred to me then that Alex had been in on things. I smiled to myself thinking about how he’d managed to keep his cover and get me to pack my things without revealing the reason we were doing it when we did. It was a little disconcerting, too—trust issues and all that. But the whole thing had originally been meant to be fun. And I was on my way to see him, so I could tell him what I thought about being tricked like this. I wasn’t a fan.

  Chapter Fifty

  The trek through the woods wasn’t treacherous because we were in the most dense and darkest of forests, but because all I had on was my swimsuit, a flimsy cover-up, and slip on sandals.

  Kourtnee steadily wove her way through the overgrown path like a mole in its underground lair. Her hood, which she had returned to her head, contributed to her dark-gray rodent appearance.

  “So, is this the way to your campsite?”

  “Huh—oh, yeah,” she called out over her shoulder in a barely audible, and very distracted voice.

  I got the feeling I was her last assignment. The way she seemed to be focused on the end, I thought maybe she would be given her reward, whatever it might be as soon as she showed up with me. I felt like pirate’s booty.

  “Ow!” I let escape my lips after a rather large horsefly tried to exact its pound of flesh from my arm. A quick swat wasn’t fast enough, so I imagined it would continue to make the journey with us. I would have to be on the lookout.

  It was late afternoon when the heat swelled to its hottest point in the day. I could feel the sweat dripping down between my shoulder blades. My insect friend made another pass, this time right into my face. I jerked back and swatted, probably closing my eyes, and next thing I knew, my sandal hit a rock as I stepped backwards. The sandal stopped moving, but my foot didn’t. It slid right out from under me. I landed hard on my tailbone.

  “I hate it here!” I yelled. It didn’t make anything better, or hurt less, but it was some variety instead of the usual ouch, dang it or other stronger curse words that often populated my outbursts in similar moments.

  Kourtnee was several steps ahead of me on the trail when she stopped and jerked around only to watch me impatiently.

  “Don’t mind me,” I said. “I was just taking a little rest.”

  “We don’t have time to rest,” she said as she impatiently lumbered back in my direction. “C’mon.” She stood at my feet and then finally rolled her eyes and stuck her hand out to help me up.

  “Thanks,” I said with little appreciation. “You know, I can’t help remembering how K.C. and I carried you all the way into the lodge after we found you in those bushes you “climbed into.” I made air quotes with my fingers.

  “You did?”

  “Yes. We did.”

  She looked up at me from under her hood, the seemingly permanent suspicious slant to her eyes softened. “Thanks.” I knew she truly meant it. “I don’t remember much.” Her mouth twitched in the corner and she looked torn between talking to me and continuing down the path. It looked like she started to speak, but then stopped herself. “Are you ready?” she asked, her voice a few shades nicer. I nodded and followed after her.

  We finally reached a clearing in the woods—which probably hadn’t taken that long, it had just felt that way. We stepped out onto a rocky sand beach that didn’t stretch out very far before leading into the lake. Out-croppings of the dark, almost black rocks Alex and I had seen Kourtnee sitting on before, flanked on either side creating a little cove. I hadn’t seen any type of encampment on the way here. I wondered where Kourtnee had actually been staying.

  “So, Alex and K.C. are going to meet us?”

  Kourtnee stuffed her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie and surveyed the area, then looked back at me. “Huh?”

  “Alex and K.C. Where are they?”

  She paused again in her awkward way. “Just wait. You’ll find out soon.” She stared at me, and I knew she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. Instead, she chewed on a fingernail. Her eyebrows drew together, the wrinkles between them deep and lasting, I knew she’d frowned plenty of times in her life. I felt bad for that.

  I took in a breath to say something and just then she turned away from me, back toward the woods.

  “Am I supposed to follow you?”

  I barely saw the side of her face, most of it being obscured by either the hood or her dark, tangled hair, which hung down onto her chest, like limp brown seaweed. She shook her head in the negative. “Just wait here.” She disappeared into the woods.

  “Wait? Kourtnee…”

  Just then I felt the air that must have come from above the water take to the wind and blow over me. Almost through me. It was freezing cold. I turned to the lake.

  ...”run”

  * * *

  I paused to listen. It seemed as if I’d heard a whisper…or…maybe the leaves rustling in the wind.

  ...”Run!”

  * * *

  I was hearing voices again. I spun around—no one was there. Suddenly, I felt the voice inside of me, almost as if it were coming from my bones. I turned around again, my blood pumping, ready to move myself forward, but I didn’t know where to go. I took a step toward the woods, looking for a different path. I ran toward the rocks furthest from my position. I thought I saw the beginnings of a trail there.

  “Stop.” I heard that for certain this time. It didn’t come from inside of me. I blew my breath out, dropped my shoulders, my arms hanging limp, and I tipped my head back, looking toward the sky in dread.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “Pam.” There was nothing to my tone of voice. This was the last person I ever wanted to see.

  “Are you surprised to see me?” Her pitchy, falsely sweet voice had transformed since I’d last heard it. She sounded—dark.

  “Sure,” I said, very non-committal.

  The slightest squinting of her eyes let me know she hadn’t liked my reaction. And that filled me with a sick feeling of joy. I loved knowing she couldn’t elicit the desired reaction from me. It was probably kind of twisted on my part. It was the same glee I felt when my older sister had tried to get me in trouble when we were kids and it backfired on her. It didn’t happen often; usually I just got into trouble.

  “Where are Alex and K.C.?”

  “Oh, I went and got them earlier. Everyone is waiting for you.”

  “Really? Where?”

  A strange and scary smile bent the corners of her mouth. “Just around the corner. C’mon.”

  Whatever this had to do with the mystery game had become a new mystery to me.

  “I thought there was supposed to be a boat,” I said.

  “Oh, there is. Just on the other side of these rocks. You haven’t seen this part of the island, have you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We’ve been all over.”

  She climbed up a small hill with footholds created by tree roots, just at the place where the rocks met with the end of the woods. Something looked off about her. I mean, not her demeanor, I’d grown used to her personality being “off.” Sometimes more than others. But this was different. Her clothes, usually petite and form fitting hung loose. The pants were rolled up in bulky cuffs, the tails of the shirt peeking out from under her jacket—a jacket!—in this heat—curved over and past her bottom. But there was something else…

  “When we went on a walk, you mean?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” I’d lost my train of thought trying to figure out the Pam puzzle.

  “We went on a walk with Alex,” she said as she reached the top of the rocks. She stood, then turned to look down at me as I st
ill climbed upward. She turned her head from left to right, like the models do in slow motion in the shampoo commercials. Her hair came out from under her jacket collar and blew in the wind gusting at the top of the hill.

  Holy crap. That was it. “Pam, your hair!”

  “Do you like it?” she asked in her intense and needy way. She shook it out again like we were in some kind of spoof of a photo shoot. She’d cut it. Her previously longer than waist length hair was now about the length of mine.

  “Yeah, it’s great. I really like it.” I knew that now wasn’t the time to tell her it was all jagged and uneven. It looked as if she’d taken some dull garden shears and tried to cut it all at one time.

  “I can’t wait to show Alex, he’ll be so surprised.”

  He would definitely be surprised.

  As she stood there atop the hill, it occurred to me that only a while ago, as she went to sit at the table in the game room, she had gathered all of her hair to the side and laid it over the front of her shoulder before she sat down in the chair, so that she didn’t sit on her hair. It was that long. Then.

  In the time between when she did her disappearing act and now, she had cut her hair and changed her clothes.

  I reached the top of the hill feeling the creepers go down my back as Pam watched me. Glazed over. Not quite in a trance, but a distant, confident mood. She was enjoying towering over me, I could sense it.

  “I bet you don’t feel like that very often,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Small. Insignificant.”

  I paused at the top of the climb before stepping over the edge and standing at my full height. My grandmother used to harp on me about standing up straight, that tall girls shouldn’t slouch to hide their height. She would have been so proud of me at that moment.

  I had no problem seeing over the top of Pam and viewing the scenery behind her. A small boat with a motor on the end was moored there, tied to a stake in the ground. It didn’t look big enough to fit more than the two of us. A glorified rowboat. I stepped past Pam to get a closer look. My stomach churned at the thought of getting in a boat and being at the mercy of that huge body of water.

  “I thought Alex and K.C. would be here,” I said. As the words left my mouth, I realized I needed to find an escape route. This was sinister, I could feel it. I didn’t turn to face Pam, who stood behind me, I wanted to use my position to do a visual search without her detecting what I was up to.

  The beach stretched on around the island at this point, but the sandy part narrowed to only a few feet deep, with the drop off from the tree roots of the woods reaching close to the water. Making my exit by running along the beach was out, even if I was in any kind of shape to do so, and it didn’t seem there were any openings between the trees with their giant, exposed roots.

  “I said they went ahead of us.”

  Just then I knew what had looked off about Pam. It wasn’t just her hair. The reason her clothes looked wrong. They were mine. The clothes that had been stolen while I showered in K.C.’s room.

  And her hair—it was the same length as mine. She had said we went on a walk earlier. I’d ignored it at first, thinking she meant the hike that everyone took the first day before I arrived. But she’d meant I had gone on a walk with Alex. She was putting herself in my place. I’d known we were being watched then. I’d felt it.

  I needed a plan to get as far away from her as I could. What if she decided she needed my face instead of hers too? Maybe she wanted to make a bodysuit out of my skin.

  I could jump in the boat—but I didn’t know how to start it. It looked like there were oars inside, but they were clipped in and I wouldn’t be able to get them out and use them as a weapon very quickly. Unless I pretended to be getting into the boat and then slyly grabbed them and knocked her into the water. But why did I need to do any of that? I should just tell this little troll that I wasn’t going with her and that I would figure things out on my own, thank you very much.

  “I’m not getting into that boat with y—” I turned to face Pam and found her pointing a gun at me.

  “We’re getting in the boat now,” she said in ice-cold monotone.

  I backed away slowly, toward the boat.

  “Get in.”

  “So you brought a gun with you to your friend’s wedding?” I noticed the plastic gloves covering her hands.

  “Of course. But this isn’t mine. You should know that. You’ve seen it before.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “How could you not recognize your own fiancé’s gun?”

  A lump formed at the base of my throat. “What have you done?” The words barely came out in a hoarse whisper. I didn’t have the air to push them out. It felt as if my chest was going to cave in.

  She looked at me fiendishly as she stepped into the front of the boat. “Are you accusing me of doing something to Alex? Because I would never, ever, do anything to hurt him.”

  A wave of relief washed over me. I believed her.

  “Didn’t you see him searching through his bag? Just before you left him again?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Start the motor.”

  “I don’t know how,” I said. I wasn’t lying.

  “That’s right. You don’t spend much time in the water, do you? I honestly don’t know what he sees in you.” She stood still, studying me for an uncomfortably long time. “Fine, you can row.”

  I didn’t know how to do that either.

  “Don’t think you can just waste time. We need to get moving. I’ll enjoy watching you struggle for a change.”

  I moved to grab the oars and heard a heavy sigh. “You’ve got to push us out first. And I will shoot you if you try anything.” I got out, untied the rope and pushed the boat out until the water hit me mid-shin. I clambered in and sat down, then lifted the oars out of the clips holding them to the insides of the boat. They slid up into the pivot thingies that kept them on the boat while you rowed. I’d actually tried the rowing machine at the local gym during an ill-fated free trial, and I always watched the rowing events in the summer Olympics, so at least I knew what it was supposed to look like. Kind of.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “We’re going to meet Alex.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she had done, or if anything else she said was true.

  “Pam, how did you know Alex was looking for something in our room?” I asked as I rowed.

  “From the surveillance I’ve been running,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What kind of surveillance?”

  “Everything. But I’m not giving away all my secrets.”

  I became sick to my stomach. I stopped rowing and tried to breathe so I didn’t throw up. She’d been watching us in our room. A secret compartment, a camera. Who knew? She’d likely seen us dress or undress and—doing the things couples do when they’re undressed. A change of subject was in order. Pronto.

  “So you were the murderer in the game?” I asked her.

  “Well that’s an interesting question. I was in charge of the mystery. And I was in charge of the wedding until Eva butted in. She’s done that our whole lives. I’ve been Christie’s best friend since we were toddlers. I met Alex first. You know that Alex had an affair with Eva don’t you? It was her fault, of course. She tricked him.”

  “I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out for you the way it should have.” I could only guess my best chance for getting out of this mess was to take her side and be sympathetic.

  “You need to turn more that way,” she said, pointing to her left.

  I stopped rowing and gave her a blank stare in return. “I have no idea how to do that.”

  “Stop rowing with that arm,” she pointed, “and keep going with that one.”

  I did what she said and it actually worked.

  “Now use both arms again.”

  “Couldn’t we just use the motor?”

  “Hmm. No, I’m afraid no
t. I want you to have to work just as hard as I have had to this week. That makes it fair. It’s a more even choice that way.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Okay, but can I take a break? I’m not used to this kind of exercise.”

  “Fine.”

  “You know, Eva didn’t tell me the whole truth about anything. Now that I know who was really in charge of everything, I know who to ask.”

  A proud smile spread across her face. “Ask what?”

  “Who was the real murderer? I want to know if I guessed right.”

  “Well, that stupid mystery game company had it all wrong. They were going to have Eva be the murderer. She would have collected the consolation money. And it wasn’t fair. She probably lied to them somehow, did what she always does to take away from others.”

  “So you fixed it,” I said, volunteering the answer for her.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged.

  “And you rightly changed the outcome so that you were the murderer. I didn’t realize there was a consolation prize. That makes sense. But Eva didn’t tell us that, either.”

  “You need to start rowing.”

  I nodded and obliged. “Am I going in the right direction?” We needed to become besties. It was the only thing I could think of to keep her from doing whatever crazy thing she had planned. In the midst of the heavy breathing I was doing because of the rowing, I felt a tightening in my chest as I noticed the change in the color of the water as it got deeper. I was trying to keep myself from hyperventilating.

  “You deserve it. The prize—I mean. You’ve done all the work,” I said, the irony hanging thick in the air as I took another stroke with the oars.

  “I don’t care about the money. That’s not the prize.” She looked me up and down and I knew that she meant Alex was the prize.

  “Tell me this,” I said as I grunted in order to pull the oars another stroke. I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. “Did you push Kourtnee off the roof?”

  One corner of her mouth twitched. “She grew a conscience that night after she got high with the boys.” I tended to believe Kourtnee’s sleeping pill version, but who knew?