She didn’t answer, instead getting slowly to her feet. “We should go back now.” Her words were like stones in her mouth. “It’s raining harder.”
A slow, chiding tilt of his head, and it was all laid bare between them, at least as much of it as she understood. Her legs faltered as she backed into the chart table; she grabbed the settee for support. “I don’t even know”—now her words were dust, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth—“it’s just a video. I—”
“Pearl.” In a sigh. “You should not have watched that.”
Panic trickled in, quickening, becoming a flood. Her gaze slid to the cabin door.
“It’s okay. Really. I’m almost glad it was you.” He stepped forward; she stepped back. “If somebody else had to find it first, you should be the one. I’ve been looking . . . for months. They didn’t really know what they had, so it stood to reason that they hadn’t hid it all that well.” A slight lift of his shoulders. “I was wrong.”
She opened her mouth, but a choked sound came out first, not words. “You did it.” Horror, then, a sickening blow. “You had him do it.”
“Hold still.” She kept going. His eyes widened slightly. “Stop moving away from me.”
Pearl dodged and ran, the steps and door twenty feet away, fifteen—he caught her around her waist and slung her back, slamming her into the edge of the galley counter. Then he was on her, shushing her, her cry smothered by his hand. “Stop it. Pearl? Stop it, or I won’t let you breathe.”
She thrashed against him, blows bouncing off his chest and shoulders. His hand moved to cover her nose, sealing off everything. She was still hitting, trying to bring her knee up to force him back, the roar of panic smothering everything, blurring the room in static and noise. He was still talking against her ear, nonsense sounds, until some instinct finally kicked in and she went prone, knowing only the heat of his palm and her starving lungs.
“Shhh. Like that.” He sighed again, as if mildly put out, adjusting his grip so that one of her nostrils was free. She had to cough but couldn’t, instead sucking at the pitiful stream of air. “I’m going to let go now. Can you control yourself?”
She nodded once. He released her, stepping back. Pearl gasped, stars bursting across her vision, edging down the counter away from him until she hit the wall and could go no farther. Her eyes were still watering, and she swiped at them. “You’re pretty good at that.” Her voice shook. “Get lots of experience with your sister?” He kept observing her, his eyes as still as polished obsidian, catching the lamplight. “She recorded you. Breaking down the door to get to her.”
He lowered his head slightly, gaze traveling the row of liquor bottles. “That must’ve been the day she hid it.” He moved away from Pearl, staring into the footlocker for a second before shutting the lid with the toe of his shoe and pushing it back underneath the settee. “She told Sloane that she was going to the Islander to make one of the videos for her site, but she must’ve brought both cameras. I followed. Too late, apparently.” His tone was vague, musing. “Protecting the little brother.”
Pearl watched him, not sure if this was shock, the numbness that spread through her, the feeling of detachment from this moment, this place. She saw the gate around the Garrison house. Not trying to keep someone out—trying to keep someone in. “Everybody thought it was David.” Her voice was a husky whisper. “You let them think he was the monster, making everyone afraid. But it was you. You were the one.”
Tristan absorbed this, slowly shaking his head. “He was the monster.”
The boat gave another tilt; glass tumblers slid together with a musical clink. Her gaze went to the cabin door; too far away, he’d be on her in a second. And she wasn’t giving him any excuse to take her air again. She talked fast, words coming nearly on top of each other. “Your brother and sister were scared of you. Weren’t they? You went after Joseph to get the camera back, but Cassidy helped him, hid it from you. They didn’t need to know why it was so important. Just that you’d hurt them to get it.”
“You’re not trying to understand.”
Gooseflesh, nausea, washed over her. “He killed them. He burned them.”
“And I told you. I carry that with me, all the time.”
A confession as they’d danced, mistaken for grief. “How awful for you.” Eventually, more words came to her. “How did you even find him?”
“Offer enough money, you can find someone to do anything. Something like this . . . you can’t leave a digital trail, bank transfers. The police will find it. You have to be meticulous. I can be that.” He picked something up from the magazine rack—a tube of lip gloss with a sparkly label. Cassidy’s. “He’d done time while he was living in Illinois. Manslaughter. I told him what I wanted. He should’ve been able to do it.”
It took Pearl a second to find her voice again. “You must’ve let him in. While your family was at the club that night, before you left to go up north. He was already in the house.” That was why Dad never saw any footprints by the fence, why the home protection system never went off until it detected smoke.
“He was supposed to kill the watchman. It was the best way to let the fire burn, to destroy everything. But he didn’t.”
Because Dad was Yancey’s friend. He’d been coming around the Sanfords’ house for years, since Evan was a kid. Whatever atrocities Evan had been willing to commit inside the house, when he’d recognized Dad, he hadn’t pulled the trigger. Pearl shut her eyes for a moment, released a trembling breath. “God. They were your family.”
Tristan stopped walking the lip gloss through his fingers, dropping it back among the New Yorkers and Architectural Digests. “They weren’t.” He turned to her. “David and Sloane Garrison were self-serving hypocrites who treated their children like trophies. I was always the one David chose. To crush. To try to break down.” He exhaled slowly, through a clenched jaw. “Cassidy was their automaton. Joseph was their pet. All I wanted was to be free of them.”
A gust of wind slatted rain against the portholes. The stained-glass lamp swayed on its chain, casting red and yellow dapples of light across the teak paneling. “Are you free now?” He didn’t answer her. She was sweating slightly, taking slow steps toward the cabin door. “That’s not what I see. I think it’s tearing you apart. I think that’s the real reason you didn’t leave town. You couldn’t stand to leave what you did. You’re grieving.” She shook her head, disbelieving. “You never expected to feel anything, did you?”
Tristan’s fingers curled, released. He closed half the distance, tension spooling between them. “Stop moving. Don’t make me hurt you more than I have to.”
She hesitated, swallowing an acid taste. “You’re going to have to.”
Pearl ran. He was faster, agile, blocking the path to the door, making her wheel around—she shoved over a storage container, strewing the contents in his path. The only place left was the head.
She ran inside, slid the catch home, spun to face the tiny room, full of a sickening understanding of things already done, scenes played out. As if in slow motion, she went for the cupboards under the sink—there must be a weapon, something Cassidy hadn’t thought of—then screamed as the door was slammed from the outside.
It took only two hard kicks. The gold catch—weakened from last time—exploded. Pearl lunged forward, going nowhere, only wanting to escape his hands. But he had her, grabbing her hair and shirt, heaving her forward into porcelain and a gradual, yielding darkness.
Twenty-Four
THE RAIN WOKE her, pattering against the awning overhead. She blinked, gazed at a miasma of gray and shadow. Her stomach rolled, and she turned her face against the ground, waiting for the need to be sick to pass.