to tell. “Yeah,” I said. Empty of fear, I could tilt my lips in a faint smile. “How’d you guess?”
“It’s not exactly a huge deductive leap,” he said, smiling back. It made his lip ring click against his teeth. “I’m Liam. Liam Kapoor. My mother’s your evil overlord.” Liam stepped forward with his hand outstretched and I took it. His skin was cool, his palm lightly callused. The motion pulled his sleeve up at his wrist, baring the edge of a bandage taped down over the back of his arm.
“You mean Dr. Kapoor?” I asked. She was one of the two senior staff members who ran the LARC, and the one who’d hired me.
“That’s the one. I’m spending the summer out here with her as punishment for a few minor transgressions.”
“Poor you,” I said. I wondered if those transgressions had anything to do with the bandage. “That guy . . .”
“Mikhail? He’s the caretaker. Or groundskeeper. Or something,” Liam said. “Wanders around the island with a shovel, glaring at people. He’s not what I’d call friendly, but I’ve never seen him accost anyone like that.”
“I think he just—wasn’t sure who I was,” I suggested.
“There’s a way of saying hello without coming off like a total creeper, and that wasn’t it,” Liam said, eyeing me with an uncertain look. Like he was wondering if he needed to be more forceful, more comforting, or something else entirely. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m totally sure. Completely sure. Absolutely—”
“Got it,” he said with a laugh. I crafted a smile, false and crooked.
“Although I am exhausted,” I confessed. It wasn’t a lie—I’d been traveling for more than thirty-six hours, crammed on planes, jostled on buses, and pitched around in Mr. Nguyen’s little boat. “Dr. Kapoor’s instructions said to head down the road until I reached Mrs. Popova’s house.”
“You’re on the right track. Dr. Kapoor’s place is right up there.” He pointed in the direction he had come from. “I was out for a walk when I heard you. Mikhail’s place is by the water nearer the LARC, and Mrs. Popova’s is straight that way, at the eastern end of the island. Come on, I’ll walk you there.”
I nodded. I didn’t look at the water, at the tree, at Mr. Nguyen retreating. I kept my eyes fixed on the gravel road, and on the sky ahead, where a dozen birds wheeled and cried.
I’d done my research before I came here. I knew my mother wasn’t the first to disappear from Bitter Rock. There was the Krachka. Landontown. And, in 1943, there was a tiny army outpost. Thirteen men, an airstrip, and a few planes.
Like my mother, they had come to Bitter Rock.
Like my mother, they had vanished.
I kept my eyes on the road, and I wondered—what if they weren’t gone at all?
My grandpa was in the air force during World War II. He always said that the scariest story he had wasn’t from his days dodging German Messerschmitts over Europe, but on our own home turf. Early in the war, he was stationed at an airstrip on a tiny Alaskan island. They dubbed it “Fort Bird Shit.” It was a boring assignment. The Japanese threat was farther west, so the biggest problem they had to deal with was the salt water in the air corroding the metal on the planes.
Some weird things happened, but nothing that couldn’t be chalked up to men being drunk, bored, and isolated. Seeing people who weren’t there, hearing weird noises, that sort of thing. One man insisted that someone was speaking Russian to him whenever he started drifting off to sleep. Then one day my grandpa gets the job of taking the ranking officer back to the mainland. There was a thick mist that night. They headed back the next day—and everyone was gone. Everyone.
Whatever happened, it was just after dinner, because the dishes were being washed. They were abandoned in the tubs. Some boots and rifles were missing, but not all of them, which meant that some of the men were barefoot and unarmed. One of the planes was crashed in a ditch, like someone had tried to take off. A wall nearby was riddled with bullet holes.
They never found out what happened. The official report said a storm killed everyone, but Grandpa insisted the night was calm. Not even a breeze. Just fog.