Page 14 of Tourist Season

And then I leave the Capeside Inn with a backpack slung across my shoulder, my thoughts taken up by war.

Irene is still asleep when I stride through the lobby and pause at the door, taking my time to survey the parking lot.

It’s raining, misty. There are only a few cars parked here, and aside from Irene’s old Hyundai, which I’m ninety-nine percent positive she can’t legally drive, the others seem to be mostly rentals.

A nondescript SUV. A silver sedan. There’s an Escalade with a personalized license plate, so I discount that one.

With a menacing smile, I run into the rain, headed straight for the black SUV.

When I get to the vehicle, I huddle next to the passenger side front tire, drop the backpack from my shoulder, then retrieve a sheathed knife from its depths.

A heartbeat later, the blade is lodged to the hilt in the tire, and I give it enough of a twist that it will slowly leak air.

Then I rise, putting the backpack on and tightening the straps.

With a quiet laugh, I turn and run, leaving my gift of his weapon behind.

I’m soaking wet when I make it into my cottage, my bra and panties slick against my skin, water sloshing in my boots with every step as I march to the kitchen table and drop the bag on its surface.

Fear and excitement and anticipation sear my veins and tremble in my fingers.

I grip the zipper and open the main compartment to pull out the weapons hidden inside.

Knives. Screwdrivers. A Glock and two magazines of ammunition.

There are cutters. A folding saw. Even a cheese slicer, which makes my skin crawl when I think about Nolan’s book.

His bag contains everything a psychopathic killer could ever dream of for a holiday pack.

Even his trophies.

I stuff everything except the gun and ammunition back into the main compartment, and then I unzip the laptop section, withdrawing the book to set it on the table as I lower myself onto a chair. I take a deep breath and flip to the page I saw in his room.

“Trevor Fisher,” I whisper. I trace the name written at the top of the left side, letting my fingers drift across the paper to what is surely preserved human skin. “Who were you?”

I don’t recognize anything about him. Not his crimes, or the place marked on a map, or the memento mori tattoo affixed to the scrapbook.

I flip to the previous page, where there’s a similar layout of petty crimes and a map and a desiccated piece of human skin, another memento mori tattoo imprinted in the leathery slice.

Dylan Jacobs is the name at the top of the parchment above photos of the unfamiliar man.

He was a tattoo artist, judging by the candid shots of him working in a tattoo parlor.

And he must have died a similar torturous death to Trevor Fisher’s.

His face was twisted in pain in the second set of photos, his terror frozen in time.

The photo that interests me most is one of Nolan standing next to Dylan in the shop, the ouroboros tattoo fresh on his forearm.

Dylan smiles with pride at his work. Nolan smiles too, but there’s an edge hidden in its sharp borders.

He’s not just happy with the ink on his skin.

He’s basking in the humor of a joke that’s only funny to him. He’s a hunter toying with his prey.

I might not know who Nolan Rhodes is. But I know his kind, and not just because we’re similar creatures on different branches of the same evolutionary tree.

He’s not the first serial killer I’ve crossed paths with, after all.

But he’s the first who has come to hunt me down specifically.

I’m not just a random opportunity to seize. I’m the prize he’s been waiting for.

And I have no idea why.

There’s a tick, tick, tick at the window.

I jolt in my seat and reach for the gun, swiveling to point it in the direction of the sound. But it’s only Morpheus, perched on the flower box, a shining string of silver chain dangling from his beak. I expel a long and shaky breath and head to the window with the gun still clutched in my hand.

“You scared the fuck out of me,” I say when I open the window and take a piece of homemade jerky from the container on the counter to offer it on my palm.

With a knocking greeting and ruffled feathers, he sets his gift in my hand before taking the meat and moving a few steps away.

I know what it is before it even hits my palm.

“Oh, Morpheus.” My thumb traces the engraved silver panel on the bracelet.

A2BC . Cracks in my heart that never seal seem to split a little wider, and it takes a long moment for me to swallow down a sudden well of tears.

Morpheus must have followed me when I went to the Lancaster family plot last week, and has brought it back in case it was lost. “This is lovely, but I meant to leave it where you found it. You shouldn’t take things from the cemetery, you could make people very upset. ”

Morpheus caws and knocks, then imitates my voice as he says “good boy,” his attention fixed on the jar of jerky.

With a sigh and a tense, fleeting smile, I leave the bracelet on the counter and give him another piece of beef, casting a wary look around the garden.

The rain has stopped but the mist still lingers, obscuring the manor house from view.

Chances are strong that Nolan has returned to his room at the Capeside Inn.

Maybe he won’t notice I’ve been there just yet.

But I can’t be sure. I might not have much time.

I set a few more treats out for Morpheus to keep him occupied, and I leave the window open, knowing he’ll raise an alarm if an intruder comes from the direction of the garden.

And then with a final glance out the window, I return to the table with the gun at my fingertips as I sit before Nolan’s book of sins and secrets.

I flip to the next page closer to the front of the book, working my way back farther in time.

There’s a third man. Marc Beaumont. Another name I don’t recognize.

Another strip of skin, another set of photographs.

No crimes listed this time, but a map with an X at the bend of an unnamed river.

He’s probably buried there, what’s left of him, anyway.

I chew my lip, trying to pull these pieces together, but still nothing comes.

I turn the page.

This time, there is no slice of skin, no name at the top of the page.

Instead, the name is in a photograph, carved into a granite gravestone: WILLIAM EMERSON RHODES .

There are photos of a young man—some of him on his own, some with Nolan and a young woman, a family resemblance woven through the shapes of their lips and angles of their noses and the dimples in their cheeks.

Two brothers and a sister. I stare into William’s eyes, trying to force a connection that feels hidden from my view, as though if I just scraped away another layer of sediment, a picture would emerge.

A picture .

My focus trails back to the gravestone. I almost know what I’m going to see there before I read it.

July 5, four years ago.

“Billy,” I whisper, but it’s not my voice I hear. It’s a man’s desperate voice in the night. It’s grief, trapped in a gurgling cry. Billy .

My hand is shaking as I turn the next page.

Nolan Rhodes, standing with a cane, his parents and sister flanking him, a sign for Wycombe Memorial Hospital over their heads in white block letters.

Nolan Rhodes, in a rehabilitation facility, working with a physical therapist, the scar on his elbow still red and freshly healed.

Nolan Rhodes, learning to walk. Learning to write.

To feed himself. I turn the page. Nolan Rhodes in a hospital bed.

On a ventilator. In a halo of metal. Surrounded by tubes.

His face swollen and unrecognizable. Nolan Rhodes, clinging to life.

There is no photograph for the moment I see in my memory. A man on the deserted highway, his broken arm reaching for a man whose open eyes are unseeing. Every breath he takes is an agonized rumble. Every exhalation is a whisper. A plea. Billy. Wake up, Billy. Please wake up .

I turn the final page to the first one in the book. There’s only one thing on the page. A handwritten list.

Marc Beaumont, front passenger side.

Dylan Jacobs, rear passenger side.

Trevor Fisher, rear driver’s side.

And last of all, the woman who drove the car that hit him. The woman who took his brother’s life. The one who left them to die and drove away. My blood turns to crystals of ice that dance in my veins as the final words of the list are branded onto my soul.

Harper Starling, driver.

Harper Starling. The first person I ever killed.