He smiled but said nothing.

  “So when you cut the power to the security system at the General Store, you weren’t trying to hide footage of someone placing a poisoned bottle in the cooler. You only wanted to make it appear that way.”

  He nodded. “It’s all part of the trick, Kate. The rats gnawing at the wiring was an unexpected bonus. It added a nice touch.” He pulled into the makeshift parking area at the end of the street abutting the walking paths at the W’en’e’win Provincial Park. “Out we get.”

  “Here? The park?”

  “Yes, and there’s no point in screaming or trying to get anyone’s attention. The only people who could hear you would be the Wu’s, and they’ve already headed out to do their weekly shopping.”

  “And Jason?”

  “Well, Jason is a bit busy with other things at the moment. C’mon, out you get.”

  He nudged my shoulder with the barrel of the gun. I opened the passenger door and clambered out, my heart beating a frantic tattoo in my chest.

  Run! Now!

  But where? Scott would have a clear shot at me no matter which direction I headed.

  Stay calm. Play the long game. Stay alive as long as you can. Buy time. Something, someone, may come. There was still Jason. Where was he?

  “Off you go,” Scott gestured toward the forest with his gun, and I started walking.

  “You had me fooled, Scott. I thought it was Jason. But that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  “Pretty much. Take the path to the right, Kate.”

  We headed deeper into the woods, the path muddy from so much rain. It was silent, not a bird singing or animal rustling, and certainly no other people. Just silence and that thick coating of damp mist that smothered all sound.

  “Where are we going, Scott?”

  “You’ll see soon enough.”

  We continued deeper into the forest. I couldn’t figure out our direction because the bloody sun wasn’t shining. Would I ever see the sun again?

  And then, the trees began to thin a bit, and I could hear the ocean’s thrumming. We must be getting close to the shore. We stepped into a small clearing, and any hopes I had that Jason might save me shriveled up and died.

  He was lying on the forest floor, his mouth gagged and his hands tied behind his back. I thought he was already dead until his head lifted slightly, his bleary hazel eyes gazing at me with a mixture of confusion and fear.

  “Go and sit beside him, Kate.”

  I sat down on the mucky leaves and branches that carpeted the forest floor. I reached forward and pulled the gag out of Jason’s mouth.

  “Hey, I didn’t say you could do that,” Scott snapped at me.

  “Who’s going to hear him, Scott? You said that no one would hear me if I cried out. What difference does it make?”

  Scott weighed that up for a few moments before curtly nodding his head. “Fine. He gets the chance to say something if he wants to. Not like it’s going to do him any good.”

  “What are you planning?” I asked.

  He smiled, a self-satisfied smirk. “It’s pretty simple, really. You confronted Jason with your suspicions, which I’m guessing you’ve already shared with others on the island?”

  I immediately thought of what I’d said to Gwen and Sam that morning.

  Damnit!

  When I said nothing, he nodded. “Just as I thought. When he realizes that you’ve figured everything out, he shoots you in a panic and then, realizing he has no way to escape, kills himself.”

  “With rope burns on his wrists and cuts on his face?” I asked.

  “You’re quite observant, Kate. But once again, it’s all about appearances. Your body will be found here. Jason’s will be found, eventually, in the ocean. That’s what happens when you kill yourself on a beach. You get washed out to sea.”

  “But why kill me? Wouldn’t I have been more useful to you alive, telling the police that Jason was the murderer?”

  He waggled his head from side to side, as if weighing up some trivial decision. “I did consider it. That you’d be so desperate to get your friend out of jail, you’d believe anything I’d say about Jason. But I realized you’re too much of a risk. You might have supported my story, or you might have stumbled on to the truth. I couldn’t be sure. You see, you are the worst kind of audience member.”

  “Lovely. A last insult before I die.”

  “The best audience members want to believe. They want you to shock and awe them, to convince them that the impossible is truly possible. They’re quite easy to pick out of a crowd, actually. They have a malleable, almost childlike, quality to them.”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone called me childlike.”

  “Exactly. You’re the audience member who steadfastly refuses to believe. Even if you want the trick to be true, you can’t let it go until reason has won out. You’re a journalist and an investigator, digging and digging until you get the whole story. So, I had to make sure you didn’t somehow throw a wrench into the works. After all, once you’ve killed one person, the total number no longer matters.”

  “You bastard!” The words croaked from Jason’s mouth. The red gashes in the corners of his mouth, from where the gag had cut in, dripping blood onto his chin.

  “I’m the bastard? Really? You let Rosalie come here. This was all your fault.”

  “Jason let Rosalie come here?” I repeated. “I thought both of you wanted her to stay in LA?”

  Jason shook his head, the effort causing his head to drop back onto the forest floor.

  “No,” he croaked out. “Scott didn’t want her to come. He was the one who tried to convince her, to convince both of us, to stay in LA. He wanted the…” he coughed, “…money.”

  Scott stepped closer, his outstretched arm shaking with rage as he pointed the gun at Jason’s head. “It was never about the money!” His finger hovered over the trigger, trembling so badly I thought he might accidentally shoot Jason.

  “Calm down, Scott,” I whispered. “What was it about then? What was all of this about?’

  “It was always about Rosalie,” he stated, his shaking hand still pointing the gun toward Jason. “Always about her.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, glancing around to try and get some sense of where we were in the park. It looked like we were near the headland on the island’s northern side. Besides the few residents of Millionaire’s Row, there were no homes or people for miles. But there were still lots of trees, trees that might provide me a little cover if I wanted to attempt an escape.

  Just keep him calm and talking for as long as you can.

  “He wouldn’t listen to me when I told him what retirement would do to Rosalie. He said he wanted to keep her happy now, not think about the future.” Scott laughed derisively. “As if he would ever think about the future. That was my job. To be the adult in this group, the practical one.”

  “Adult,” Jason whispered hoarsely, “More like an asshole.”

  “I’m still not getting it,” I cut in, determined to try and keep Jason alive, even if he no longer seemed to care. “So you were being the practical one in the group.”

  “Yes. Like I told you, they’d have run out of money within a decade. Would he have earned any? As a washed-up magician? I don’t think so. He’d force Rosalie back to Hollywood to try and raise some cash.”

  “And you felt she would be humiliated, a has-been,” I said.

  “Yes. I had to stop that, stop them. For Rosalie’s sake.”

  “And so you killed her? That doesn’t make any sense, Scott. I thought you loved her?”

  The gun shifted toward me, the butt of it waving madly in the air. “I did love her. I do love her. That’s why I did what I did.”

  “You poisoned her live on television.”

  “I gave her immortality. Rosalie will never age, will never become irrelevant or a joke. She will always be remembered as a beautiful star, preserved in amber like Marilyn or Diana. Forever thirty-six and stunning. An icon.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered, “you honestly believe that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. Because it’s the truth. She didn’t die in some trailer park at 70, washed up, forgotten, alone. She died on camera for the world to see. So that everyone would remember Rosalie Morgann.”

  “You mean Rose Morgan.”

  “No, that was the girl from Wynter Island. She disappeared a long time ago. I mean Rosalie Morgann, the star.”

  I glanced around at the still forest surrounding us. No, that wasn’t true. She had wanted to return to Wynter Island for many reasons, none of which had anything to do with her being a star. She wanted to ask forgiveness for her past transgressions, repay Phil for his kindness toward her, and try to find the young girl whose life suddenly stopped on the day of her mother’s death.

  She wanted to find Rose Morgan, not Rosalie Morgann.

  I stood up suddenly, Scott’s gun following me. “You’re wrong, Scott. You’re wrong about everything!” My voice rose to a hysterical screech as I tried to look as unhinged as possible. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Jason was struggling to sit up. “How could you do that to her? That wasn’t love! You didn’t love her! You killed her!”

  I slammed my hand against a tree in anger, trying to spot the best path toward the shore as I did so. I knew there was a drop-off to the beach below, but I wasn’t sure how far the drop was. I stamped a few feet closer, still keeping eye contact with Scott. I had to get him over there, to the edge. It was the only hope I had other than running, and my luck wouldn’t last long enough for me to get out of the park alive.

  Look at me, Scott. Don’t look at where I’m going. Don’t think about what I may be doing. Look at this big, bright ball so that you can’t see my other hand manipulating your world over here in the corner.

  “You ruined everything! She would have had a new start and a new life here, but you wouldn’t let her, would you? No, you knew better than everyone else, didn’t you?” I stumbled backward towards another tree, grabbing its branches in a frenzy. “And in the process, you destroyed the station. The station I worked so hard to get running. And you ruined Selesia’s life. You didn’t care about anyone but yourself!”

  I took another step backward, praying I didn’t stumble over a fallen log. The only way this would work was if it looked utterly unplanned, unscripted.

  Scott took one step and then another, unconsciously following me, his brow furrowing as he tried to comprehend what I was shouting at him.

  “Stop it! That’s not true!”

  I took a massive step backward, feeling my sneaker land solidly on flat soil. I raised my voice even louder, its sharp edges scratching against the silence of the sky. “It is true, Scott. You cared about what Rosalie’s reputation meant to you, not what might happen to her. This is all about you, isn’t it? You couldn’t make it in Vegas, so you decided to attach yourself to her success and bask in her reflected glory.”

  “You bitch!” Scott shouted, beginning to run toward me with the gun outstretched. “How dare you say that! Those are lies! Lies! I loved Rosalie!”

  I glanced over my shoulder. I was still a good twelve feet from the edge. Not close enough to accomplish anything. Scott ran toward me, his face lit with a brutal, unforgiving wrath.

  My trick hadn’t worked. I had pushed too far and now had to pay the price. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the bullet coming. Just blackness and then nothing.

  I felt him stop beside me, the smell of sweat creeping from his body to envelop mine. “You bitch,” he whispered in my ear as the sound of a gun being cocked clicked beside my head.

  I took a deep breath.

  It’ll just be a moment. Just a moment, and then it will all be over.

  Daniel’s face and then Michael’s washed before me as a single tear trickled down my cheek.

  I will miss you, Jupiter.

  A pause, and then I felt a rush of wind, of motion, sweep beside me. I opened my eyes, swiveling on my feet to catch the briefest instant of Jason barrelling straight towards the edge like a steam train, pushing Scott forward with the force of his body. There was a sudden whoosh of dirt, water, and stones cascading away as the sodden ground collapsed beneath their feet, plummeting them down toward the ocean.

  Chapter Forty

  Screams filled the air as they fell, stopping abruptly as their bodies smashed onto the beach below. Then silence. I stood for a moment, unable to move, my limbs vibrating with delayed shock.

  I’m alive. I’m still alive.

  I slowly made my way to the crumbling headland, taking care to hold on to the trunk of a tree as I peered over the edge. Approximately twenty feet below, two bodies lay spread-eagled on the rocky shore. Jason was face down, a growing pool of crimson spreading over the mossy stones beside his head. He had landed face first, unable to break his fall because his hands were still tied behind his back. He was dead. I was sure of it.

  Scott, lying on his back beside him, suddenly moved, one hand clawing at the stones where his gun had landed. His other hand held a ripped-out tree root, most likely grabbed on his way down to slow his fall. It must have worked because his eyes flickered and then opened. He was alive.

  A wave of fury engulfed me.

  He’s alive! He killed Rosalie and Jason, and he survived!

  A groan escaped his lips and traveled up to where I was standing. Was he trying to talk?

  “Kate.”

  Can he see me? Does he realize I’m here? Does he expect my help after all that he’s done?

  “Kate.” Again, the single word hung in the air.

  “You bastard!” I suddenly screamed, “Jason’s dead! Rosalie’s dead! All because of you and your delusions of grandeur! I should just leave you here to die on the beach!”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could even process what I was saying. Did I mean it? Could I just walk away and allow him to bleed out on this isolated beach? No one would ever need to know.

  “Kate.”

  “You don’t deserve my compassion!”

  My shout echoed through the forest.

  “You’re right,” he said weakly. “Go.”

  My breath came in deep gusts of anger mixed with shock and adrenalin. There, he had said it. Go. Leave him there to die. I couldn’t be held responsible. That’s what he wanted.

  And yet I didn’t move. I shifted one foot, and a stone rolled down the headland towards the beach.

  “Are you still there?”

  Go! Just go! He deserves it! Leave him to die!

  And still, I didn’t move. I stepped back from the edge, swallowing a few times to try and calm myself.

  He may deserve to die, but I don’t deserve to carry the burden of that decision with me for the rest of my life.

  “I’m going for help, Scott.”

  * * *

  I made it to Betty and Gordon’s house, managing to bang on the front door before collapsing on their porch. Betty’s round face blanched as she opened the door and saw me on the ground. She shouted something in Cantonese, and Gordon came running. I babbled out that Jason was dead and Scott badly injured, that the edge of the headland had given way beneath them. Gordon gasped and ran toward the beach.

  Within twenty minutes, an RCMP cruiser, lights, and sirens going, tore down the street and pulled into Betty’s driveway. A constable I didn’t recognize clambered out and walked over to us. Gordon must have called 911 from his cell phone.

  “Are you Kate Thomas?”

  I nodded. He reached into his back pocket to pull out his portable radio. “Yes, I’ve got her.” He glanced over at me before continuing to speak into the handheld radio. “She appears to be alright. Upset but alright. Yes, yes, I’ll hand her the radio.” He thrust the radio out to me. I took it and gingerly brought it up to my face.

  “Kate? Kate, is that you?”

  It was Ian’s voice.

  “Yes, Ian. It’s me,” Exhaustion and grief bubbled up in my throat. “I’m okay. But Jason is dead. And Scott is badly injured. Scott killed Rosalie, Ian. He’s the murderer. He poisoned her with her lipstick, I think. I’m not sure.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there, Kate. I’ve been busy with Frederic Stern.”

  “Frederic Stern?”

  “It’s too long a story to go into now, but his assistant confessed that he set up the burglary at the Glass House. He wanted to get a copy of the autobiography to see how damaging it might be to Stern.”

  “You mean Stern asked him to do that.”

  “No, he’s taking the fall for his boss. Probably for a nice chunk of change and a light tap on the wrist sentencing-wise.”

  “So someone did break into the Glass House and hit Jason over the head.”

  “Exactly. We can talk it all over when I get there. I’m catching the three p.m. flight. I’ll meet you at the detachment.”

  “Okay. But Ian, how is Lesley doing?”

  Static came over the radio for a moment before he spoke. “She’s still in surgery. Internal bleeding. We won’t know anything until she’s out of the OR.”

  “Oh, okay. Bye.”

  I handed the radio back to the constable as Betty wrapped her arms around me.

  * * *

  Betty accompanied me to the station after calling Gwen and Vera and telling them to meet us there. Vera brought some food and an herbal tea that was supposed to treat shock. It tasted like boiled grass.

  At the station, we were able to get some news from the scurrying ant-like troop of RCMP officers who had descended on the island. Stewart had caught the shooter near Hope Bay. A gun still clenched in his hands as he tried to untie and steal a sailboat from the dock. It turned out that he was the teenage son of a Seattle couple who had dragged him onto their boat in an attempt to detox him in the middle of the Pacific.

  The kid had burned through rehab program after rehab program, leaving his parents feeling they had no other choice to save his life. After making sure to dose his parents’ evening drinks with a sleeping pill, he had woken early that morning, stolen his father’s gun, and headed on shore to try and find some money and a way off the island. His first stop had been the Legion.