Chapter Ten: We Are Not Going Out

Lila’s nails dug into Caine’s arm.

“He’s waiting for you to rush out.” Caine’s lips were almost against her ear. “He knows that line will get to you.”

Outside, Shaw spoke again, his voice slow and unhurried: “Your sister was the same, that day. Before dawn, all alone, insisted on coming down to the reefs. We didn’t stop her. She wanted to come find something, on her own.”

Lila went rigid.

Something.

The case file had never once mentioned that on the night Emma disappeared, she had gone out on her own, deliberately, to meet someone or find something. That detail had been deliberately erased from the report back then.

“What was she looking for?” Lila heard her own voice, hoarse as a stranger’s.

Caine tried to stop her, but it was too late. Shaw laughed on the other side of the door, like a man who had finally hooked a fish.

“She was looking for a cassette tape,” Shaw said. “A tape that would have put the Garretts in prison. Your sister was supposed to hand it over to the state troopers that night.”

The room went dead silent.

Something changed in Caine’s eyes. A tape — it was something that had never appeared anywhere in the entire case file. If Shaw was telling the truth, then twenty years ago Emma had not been a random victim; she had walked to her death carrying evidence.

“But she never got to hand it over.” Shaw’s voice came through the door as if rising up from underwater. “Because when she was halfway up the chain, someone gave her a push from behind.”

Lila felt the whole world tilt.

“Who?” she heard herself ask.

“Come down and I’ll tell you.” Shaw said. “At the bottom of the tide cave, the tape is still there. No one’s been able to find it in twenty years. Lila, don’t you want to finish what your sister started?”

Caine’s hands locked on her shoulders. He spoke into her ear, word by word: “It’s bait. He wants you to open the door.”

But Lila’s mind was already exploding. A tape. Twenty years. Emma had died carrying evidence. And all these years, she had believed her sister was just an unlucky girl who’d run away from home.

She looked at the door. Then at Caine.

Just then, from far off, came the sound of a car engine, careering up the narrow road beneath the cliff.

It was Eli and the others.

The footsteps outside vanished at once. As if no one had ever been standing there.

Caine snapped on the porch light.

The porch was empty. Only the reef rock that had held down the note — kicked over, rolled down the steps.

And on the wet wooden boards, something was left behind.

A small, rusted brass hair clip.

Lila knew it.

It was Emma’s. The clip she had worn in her hair the day she disappeared.