“Because nothing like this has ever happened before,” Lauren piped in, her voice shrill. “Ever.”
Tristan and Joaquin shot her an admonishing look, and she bowed her head, blushing.
“Nothing like what?” I asked. “Someone going missing? But Grantz said this happens every once in a while. That they always form a search party and…”
My words died on my tongue. Tristan was looking at me like he was waiting for me to catch on already.
“Oh,” I said, my heart turning to stone. “That was a lie, too.”
But why? Why would the police chief lie to me and my father? Was he in on it? Did he know Steven Nell somehow?
“What I don’t get is why he took Darcy,” Joaquin said, clenching a fist in front of his mouth. “If he’s so pissed off he failed, why not just come after you again?”
“Because he’s messing with me,” I said, hugging my shoes even tighter. “He wants to make me pay before he—”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. The crowd shifted on their feet, murmuring, whispering. I looked at Tristan.
>
“Has he contacted you since you’ve been here?” he asked.
I thought of the note he left on my bed back home in Princeton. “No,” I said.
“Are you sure?” He squared off with me, toe-to-toe, and reached for my right hand. He held it lightly in his own for a second, then squeezed. “Think, Rory. You haven’t received any messages from him of any kind?”
I looked into Tristan’s eyes, and all of a sudden it hit me. It hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. The laughter, the humming, the song on the jukebox. The scrap of fabric, the messenger bag, the lighthouses. Maybe they hadn’t been coincidences. Maybe they hadn’t been taunts or reminders. Maybe they’d been messages.
“‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I breathed.
“What?” Joaquin asked.
“The song. ‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I said, my brain racing as I clutched Tristan’s hand. “It’s his favorite song. I heard someone humming it my first morning here, and then it was on the jukebox at the Thirsty Swan.”
Joaquin looked at Tristan. “‘The Long and Winding Road.’ What could that mean?”
“I don’t know,” Tristan said, still looking into my eyes. “What else, Rory?”
“There was a scrap of fabric that looked like it had been torn from his jacket,” I said. “It had two patches sewn on it. I think they were flags like you see on a sailboat.”
“Can you draw them?” Krista asked, breathless.
“With what?” I asked.
“The sand,” Joaquin suggested, gesturing down.
I tugged my fingers away from Tristan, dropped my shoes, and fell to my knees on the cold beach. The whole pack of locals gathered around me, their hoods shadowing their faces as they pointed their flashlights at a single spot in the sand. Shakily, I managed to draw the two flags.
“This one was blue-and-white checks, and this one was blue, white, and then red in the center,” I said, looking around at them.
“They are signal flags. That one means N,” Kevin said, pointing to the checked one. “And the other is W.”
“Northwest,” Tristan added.
Another murmur went through the crowd. All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My stomach turned, and I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting on someone’s feet.
“Dryer’s Way,” Lauren said. “That’s a long and winding road.”
“And it ends at the northwest point of the island,” Joaquin added.