* * *
The city was filled with cell phones, PA systems, rapid response teams, computers, and all manner of tools and aids for investigation.
All of that was moot on Black Bear Island. Phones never seemed to work; the internet needed to be reconnected.
He had his walkie-talkie, and he had a corpse in the snow, and a woman standing so still she might have been a statue—except that she shook like blue blazes.
He shouldn’t leave the corpse; he really shouldn’t keep a witness standing there.
But there had to be something there that suggested how the killer had come and gone, what weapon or weapons he had used—and where the hell he was now. But there seemed to be nothing; just the victim, bisected, dead in the snow. Not enough blood for the young woman to have been murdered where she lay, so she must have been brought out here—and cut in half.
By what instrument? It wasn’t easy to do—unless you happened to know how to use a French headsman’s sword or a Japanese samurai sword, a machete or a chain saw. But a chain saw would have left little bits of flesh abounding around the body, like wood chips...
There were no prints in the snow. Nothing leading away from the disposal of the body. It looked as if the victim might have been teleported to where she lay.
It wouldn’t take Mike long to get there. Thor carefully skirted the body and hiked over the little rise. The snow there was already trodden and thrown—it was where he and the shaking blond had wound up in their ridiculous tussle.
His jaw still hurt. The woman knew how to throw a right hook.
“So horrible!” she whispered, as if to herself and not to him.
“You went to the Mansion?” he said.
She nodded jerkily. “I told you that I did—and what I saw!”
He didn’t know why—especially with his jaw still hurting—but he put his hands on her shoulders, causing her to actually look at him and heed his words. “And I told you. No one there is dead. Those are mannequins at the Mansion.”
It took a second for that to register in her mind. He saw anger filter into her eyes. “It was all a joke for that ridiculous show Gotcha?” she demanded.
“Not all,” he said quietly. “The woman in the snow is really dead.” He hesitated. “Natalie Fontaine is dead, too.”
Her eyes widened again. He realized just how striking she was then. The color of her eyes was blue, and yet a blue nothing at all like his ice color. Her eyes were deep and rich, almost a royal blue, and set against features with fine bone structure, arched honey brows and a perfectly straight nose.
Her face was flushed, of course. Reddened from their scramble in the snow.
“Natalie...and Amelia?” she whispered, as if the two women being dead was the most confusing possibility known to man.
“You knew them well?” he asked quietly.
“I had just met them. Still...”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“But, but my friends...are here. Somewhere. And if all the people at the house...if the scene wasn’t real... I don’t understand what’s going on at all, but I know that my friends are supposed to be on the island somewhere. Cast mates, from the show we’re doing on the ship. They headed out before me—they’re here on the island.”
The next sentences lay unspoken between them.
They are here. Dead or alive, no one knows.
The way she looked at him now, he wondered if she really believed that he was who he was—and whether he still might intend to kill her.
She seemed to shrink beneath his hold.
She lowered her head and inched back half a foot—as if anxious to be free from his touch.
Then she looked up at him and there was a hard strength that she’d forced into her features. “I came for Vacation USA. That’s what the head of entertainment for Celtic American asked me to do. The other cast members—except for our ingenue, who is finishing up a previous engagement—came here ahead of me this morning. But that was a hoax, you’re telling me? They were going to try to scare us half to death to film us for Gotcha. So those corpses at the Mansion weren’t real. But, Amelia is really...dead. And Natalie Fontaine is dead, too. That is the real situation?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
She swallowed hard and nodded.
“Miss Avery, have you seen anyone else here on the island—alive?”
She looked at him with alarm. “Oh, God! Oh, God, Simon... Larry... Ralph!”
She turned and started to run. He tore after her. He realized that she was headed for the Alaska Hut.
He didn’t want to tackle her again. But he also didn’t want her rushing into the building if there was a sword/knife/machete-wielding killer awaiting her.
“Miss Avery!”
She kept running.
No choice.
He caught her by the shoulders and they went down together again. She started to fight him but he gripped her hard.
“Wait!” he said firmly. “Let me go first—”
“My friends—”
“I have a gun. You don’t!” he snapped.
She went still and nodded at that, probably realizing the folly of running into the unknown. Thor rose, not waiting for her to accept an offered hand, just pulling her back up with him. They were both covered in snow. He went first, moving with good speed through the soft snow. He heard her behind him. At the door of the rustic log cabin, he pulled his weapon, and then threw the wooden door open.
A flash of light went off.
“Gotcha!” someone shouted.
He assessed that six people were there, five men, one woman; the lone woman held a microphone, while one man held a large camera.
The woman dropped the microphone and screamed as she noted that he was wielding a gun.
“FBI,” he said quickly.
From behind him, Clara Avery went tearing through, throwing herself into the arms of a tall blond man.
“What the hell...?” the man asked.
“Natalie Fontaine is dead,” Clara said. “And...and Amelia Carson. She’s dead—dead in the snow.”
“No, no!” the woman in the group said, trying to ascertain how badly she had damaged the microphone she’d dropped. “No, it’s all just for Gotcha. See the mic you made me drop? I’m Becca Marle, sound. It’s—it’s just a joke,” she finished weakly.
A man at her side, slightly older, spoke up. “Tommy Marchant, cameraman, videographer... We’re filming them. That’s it. See, we got your cast mates before you, too—they also thought it was real. Maybe they decided to join in and scare us as well or...”
He desperately wanted his words to be true.
“No,” Thor said harshly, holstering his gun and producing his credentials. “No—the scene at the Mansion might have been for your show, but Miss Fontaine and Miss Carson are dead.”
“Don’t try to trick a trickster,” one of the men protested. “What—are you from dial-a-stripper or something? Set up to play bad cop? Hey, don’t mess with me. I’m Nate Mahoney, best young fabricator coming up the ranks. Trust me, I know I’m good. But it’s for TV, it’s for a show, a reality show.”
Thor had to take in a deep breath. “The reality is,”