Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(61)

Later, after my ill-fated fishing expedition with Alex, my mother found me and brought me back to the hotel room. The broken glass had been cleaned up. The cut on her eye was covered by a butterfly bandage. She treated my foot and tried not to cry as she explained that my father was gone. He’d taken the ferry back to the mainland without us. My mother and he were taking a little vacation from their marriage.

I didn’t understand. In my mind, vacation meant Rebel Island. My dad was already on vacation. Where would he go?

Now, thinking back on that day, my foot began to ache again. I pressed my hand against the battered door of room 102 and imagined pushing it open, seeing my parents inside.

Why would Alex block off this room?

Only one way to find out. I turned and headed back toward the stairs.

Lane Sanford was packing, but she closed her suitcase and latched it when I came in.

“Here to see me or my closet?” she asked.

“Your closet,” I said. “Most popular one in the hotel.”

“Naturally.” She turned her back to me and bundled some clothes, then hesitated. Apparently she realized she needed to put them in the suitcase, but she’d closed it too quickly, and she didn’t want to open it in my presence.

“Did Garrett talk to you?” I asked.

She folded a pink dress. “About the bomb. Yes.”

“You sound pretty calm about it.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “That’s why.”

“I can show you the door.”

“Tres, I don’t believe anyone besides my husband would want to kill me. That’s what I mean. And frankly, a bomb isn’t Bobby’s style.”

There was tightness in her voice, like a guitar string tuned an octave too high.

“Were you and Chris Stowall involved?”

She shook her head. “Not the way you mean.”

“In what way, then?”

“I told you. I’d known him since high school. Chris was no angel, but he came from a hard family. He knew how I felt. He would never hurt anyone…”

“Unless?”

She sat on her bed and looked up at me. “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Is that what you told Garrett?”

Her cheeks colored. “I told Garrett I was sorry we’d met like this. I told him Chris was a friend, trying to protect me. Chris offered me shelter. He offered me more help, too. But I refused.”

“What kind of help?”

“To get my husband out of the way.”

“To kill him.”

“I don’t think he could have done it. Not really. But he was angry. He said he knew someone who could.”

“Calavera.”

“I don’t know.”

“Chris used the same threat on Ty and Markie. He was helping them run drugs, pressuring them for more money. He seemed to like having Calavera as an ace up his sleeve.”

“Chris tried to help me, Tres. He didn’t deserve to die for that.”

The tone of her voice made me wonder if I’d completely misread Stowall’s feelings for her. “You talk about him as if he was a relative.”

She got up and took her suitcase. “The closet is all yours. I’ll take my things to Garrett’s room.”

She said it defiantly, daring me to protest her moving in with Garrett.

“Lane, was Chris your brother?”

The look in her eyes was close to pity, as if she felt sorry for how little I understood the world. “Tres, my married name was Stowall. Chris was my husband’s brother. That’s why he knew how much danger I was in.”

The secret stairway was still there. I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be, but I was used to not getting what I hoped for.

I thought about Lane Sanford, and how she’d ended up with such an inconvenient room. I wondered if Chris had given her this room for some reason. I was no longer sure what to make of it.

If Chris had made plans to help Lane against his homicidal brother, it made sense that he’d want an escape plan, including a lot of money. I remembered the little pictures Chris had drawn in his journal, the photo of Waikiki Beach on his mirror. Perhaps he still believed he could convince Lane to go with him. In time, he could get her to love him. A surfer’s happily-ever-after. Pretty simplistic. But I couldn’t blame him for holding out hopes for Lane. As near as I could tell, she and Alex Huff were the only ones who’d ever given Chris a chance at a clean slate. Chris had messed things up pretty bad.

I took a deep breath and headed into the stairwell. This time I went down instead of up.

I almost fell through on the third step. It cracked as I put my weight on it and I flailed out, catching something with my hand that turned out to be a large nail. The metal bit into my palm. I could feel it bleeding, but I didn’t want to look. One more souvenir I’d have from my honeymoon—a tetanus shot. I examined the remaining steps with my flashlight and found that they were in pretty bad shape.

I tested each one. Five steps down, two of them broke with a light kick. Finally, I managed to half walk, half wall-climb my way to the bottom, which was still covered in an inch or so of salt water. Unfortunately, there was another secret door. It opened into a closet, which opened into room 102. I didn’t have to look around very long to see the place had been converted for use by a valued member of the hotel family. The assassin Calavera.