Page 61 of Half the Summer's Night
Then I shove him back, hard enough that he cracks into one of the animatronics. I cringe inwardly; I wanted the ship untouched. But I suppose that adds a touch of verisimilitude, considering he’s meant to look like he was stumbling drunkenly around up here.
It also stuns him, which gives me a chance to dart over to the button that activates the ship’s mechanisms.
I jam the key into the ignition, turn it, press the button. With a groan and a clatter, the pirate ship creaks to life. For a second, I just stand there, listening to the symphony of mechanical groans from inside. All that metal grinding together.
I climb back up the ladder. My victim stirs against the animatronic pirate captain, who twists back and forth despite the crack in his peg leg. I grab my victim by his hair and heave him toward the open hatch.
For a moment, I think he might be knocked out, given how heavy his body feels. But as I hold his head over the hatch, he wakes up, screaming.
“No!” he howls. “What the fuck! No! Don’t do this, man! I told you, I can pay! I can?—”
I shove him inside, face-first.
For a second, his screams drown out the grinding mechanism of the pirate ship. He kicks furiously, trying to drag himself out, but my rope holds him in place. And eventually, his screams fade into a kind of wet squelching, and blood splats out against the dark of the night. I step back, watching his body twist and flop as the ship’s mechanism chews him up. And then there’s a loud, sighing groan, and the ship jolts sharply and comes to a halt. I can smell something going wrong, the hot metallic scent of metal parts jammed together.
I kneel beside what’s left of my victim. It was his shoulder that broke the ship, the way it jammed in at an angle. The other shoulder juts up, his arm flopped against the deck.
Very carefully, I push his shirt sleeve up, revealing a smooth patch of skin. Then I pull out my pocket knife and press the blade there, making a single tiny mark. Then another. Another. Three simple lashes to form the letterK.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” I whisper, holding Abi’s bright smile in my mind.
23
ABI
“Got another one for you.”
It’s Deputy Muñez on the end of the line, sounding put out. Fear knots up tight in my belly, though. “Another one?” I echo, staring at my computer screen.Like Olivia?I think, even though I know it’s impossible. That killer is dead.
“Yeah, another drunk tourist fucking around where he shouldn’t.”
Relief floods through me, but just for a second. It’s immediately replaced with another squeeze of—not fear, exactly. Anxiety, maybe.
Anticipation.
“What do you mean?” I push away from my computer and stare out at the examination room. “What happened?”
“Some college kid broke into Neptune’s Adventure?—“
I freeze, hearing the name. I was just there yesterday. It had been nice, with the sea wind keeping me and Rowan cool as we worked through the menagerie of fiberglass animals. The only dark spot had been those two dickbags at the pirate ship, but that was a minor thing. Mostly, I remember Rowan: sweet, caring, shy.
Fuck, what if Nameless saw us together?
“—mangled pretty bad, so I did want to give you a heads up. I should have the body to you by this afternoon.”
I blink, trying to catch up to the conversation. “That’s fine,” I say, working backwards through what he told me. An accident. The victim fell inside the pirate ship while it was running.
“Do they have an ID?” I ask, my heart hammering furiously. I’m terrified it’s Rowan. Terrified that Nameless saw me with him and went after him, a thought that makes me nauseated.
“Oh, yeah. The wallet wasn’t damaged. A college kid visiting from Dallas.”
I breathe out. Not Rowan, then.
“His friend reported him missing around three in the morning,” Deputy Muñez continues. “Said they’d been out drinking and that the victim was pretty sloshed. Probably went wandering and wound up at the mini golf course. It wasn’t far from where they were staying.”
My head buzzes. Maybe it’s not Nameless. Maybe it really was just an accident?—
But you could say the same about all his other kills, too.
