The Island by Natasha Preston

Author:Natasha Preston [Preston, Natasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

16

I take a breath to settle my nerves, but it has no effect at all. “We went looking for you down there. It was empty.”

Liam frowns. “So it wasn’t you who I heard outside?”

“It couldn’t have been. We only went outside once we realized you were gone. Robert was out there, though. He chased me but I got away, obviously. It was probably him trying to draw you out.”

He leans his head back against the wall. “I’m sorry, Pais. We ran outside because I thought it was you all. It was him. I could’ve gotten everyone killed.”

“You didn’t know, dude. We all made the decision to go,” Gibson says, clapping him on the shoulder.

They were really running after the killer.

I take a seat next to Reeve to keep an eye on him, but I address Liam and Gibson. “Did you see anyone or anything?”

Liam shakes his head. “Malcolm, Gibson, and I split up and regrouped by the big coaster. We realized that something was wrong when the shouting stopped suddenly at the same time we heard you screaming Reeve’s name.”

“Was it Reeve you heard shouting?” I ask. “We heard him on the radio and that’s when I came outside. Robert was waiting.”

Gibson frowns as he thinks about if it was his friend he heard. Wouldn’t you know that instantly? We did, but I suppose we weren’t in the storm. “It was too hard to make that out. I was too far away to make sense of the voice.”

“So, you were all running around separately?” Harper asks as if that’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard.

Liam scowls at her. “We were worried one of you was being murdered. We split up to find you faster. Paisley almost died!”

“Knock it off. We’re not arguing over this, and we don’t need to justify anything to you,” Gibson says. “Now that we’re all back together, we need…Wait, where’s James?”

Ava sobs at the sound of his name and curls into a ball in the corner of the room. She puts her head against her knees. Harper is on her in a second, wrapping her arm around her shoulders to comfort her. She’s a good friend, but I can tell she’s getting annoyed with the dramatics.

Harper doesn’t seem to have much time for emotion. She, like me, just wants to figure this out.

There will be plenty of time to process later. Good thing I have money now because therapy is going to be expensive.

“Um. James…” I can’t say the words, and I can’t believe it was only an hour ago that he was murdered. It feels like days already.

“What?” Malcolm clutches a fistful of his gold sweater over his heart. “No. Please don’t say…”

“He’s dead.” I tell them what happened back in the lobby, about the electricity cutting out and us finding James dead when it came back on. I leave nothing out.

Which leads to a follow-up question.

Where was Reeve when the lights went out?

Malcolm is the one who asks, and I’m so glad that he did because I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing him.

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