Page 85 of The Bridesmaid

His face turns serious. ‘Of course I do,’ he says. But that’s not an option for us.’

‘Don’t you wish you’d just met a normal girl?’

‘No.’ He pulls me tight. ‘Let me show you why.’ Before I can answer, he kisses me hard. I kiss him back, and circle him with my legs, feeling myself melt into him. Mark slides his hands down my body, hooking his thumbs into my bikini bottoms.

‘We can’t,’ I breathe. ‘Literally, the whole beach can see us.’

‘So?’ he kisses me again. ‘It’s your private island, right?’

I try to relax, but from the corner of my eye, I see something winking in the sun. A photographer’s lens?

I sit up in the pool. It’s nothing. Just a sunspot on the water. But somehow the mood has gone.

Chapter Sixty-eight

HOLLY

I can’t take my eyes off the open pit. Tucked among the coffee-colored soil are bones. Lots and lots of bones.

The excavator fires up, and the claw bucket, with its ghoulish human remains, twists around and dumps its load to the side of the loamy pit beneath. The ribcage rolls onto a pile of discarded soil. Even from this distance I can see it’s not the only bone fragment. Tossed aside, half buried in the pile of dug-out earth, I make out a femur, part of a skull, and the broken pieces of at least one hand. All are bleached gray from years underground.

They vary in size. I see small ribcages. Tiny skulls. Long femurs and large mandibles.

I twist back out of sight, resting against the wall.

‘There are children’s bones in that grave,’ I say, my stomach tightening at the thought.

Fitzwilliam’s square-jawed face is deathly pale. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

I nod. My heart is pounding. It’s not the first time I’ve seen human remains. But so many young skeletons … And there’s something about the casual way they’ve been tossed aside that makes my skin crawl.

By the pit, the whirring sound of the excavator suddenly cuts out. My blood turns to ice. Fitzwilliam and I stand stock-still, pressed against the side of the building. It’s a terrible hiding place. We’re in plain view of anyone walking in this direction.

There are shouts in Spanish. Then, just as I’m certain we’re about to be discovered, the voices recede. We wait several agonizing seconds before Fitzwilliam risks another glance around the corner.

‘They’re leaving,’ he says. ‘Taking a break maybe. We should go before they come back.’

‘I’m taking a look.’ Ignoring Fitzwilliam’s pained expression, I walk softly toward the pit. With a sigh of despair, he follows me.

Old bones stick out of the soil like pirate treasure. Skulls roll in the dirt. There must be hundreds of bodies in this pit, if not more.

‘Why would there be a mass grave on this island?’ I ask, thinking out loud.

‘Drugs?’ he suggests. ‘Maybe this is some drug-smuggling hide-out. Or a narco prison.’

‘The bones are old,’ I say. ‘It takes around ten years for soft tissue to degrade to full skeletonization stage.’ I think for a moment. ‘Though the process would be faster on a tropical island,’ I concede. ‘Heat. Heavy rainfall. Insects.’

‘The caves were old too,’ concedes Fitzwilliam. ‘And the manacles we found in Silky’s luggage. How long ago did Leopold inherit the island?’

‘Twenty years ago,’ I say.

As I peer over the edge I realize something.

‘It’s so shallow,’ I tell Fitzwilliam. ‘That can’t be more than two feet, right?’

‘No markers. No gravestones,’ he agrees sadly. ‘Just left to rot.’ He shakes his head at the lack of humanity.

‘The clue Simone left. Six feet under,’ I point out. ‘She wasn’t referring to a shallow grave.’