She’s playing perfectly into my hands.

The next morning, I stood shivering inside the mouth of the cave beneath the bridge, my face tight and dry from lack of sleep, feeling the emptiness of the place in every inch of my bones. Clearly Tristan and Nadia had abandoned this particular hideout. Clearly they were never coming back.

Joaquin and Fisher stepped up on either side of me and flicked on their flashlights, joining the beams with my own. Bea, Lauren, Cori, and Pete brought up the rear. Every one of us wore head-to-toe raingear, and the mud that had splattered up our legs and covered our shoes made us look like a group of ragtag roadside-ditch workers. Bea had on a weathered Dodgers cap over her red hair, while Lauren wore a bright yellow Paddington Bear–style rain hat that hid her face down to her nose. Pete’s hair was so wet the normally red locks looked black. Cori leaned against him with gray smudges beneath her eyes and her dirty hair tied into two haphazard braids.

“Why are we here, again?” Pete asked. I noticed bandages on several of his fingers as he pushed his hood back, and the prominent Adam’s apple in the center of his long neck bobbed when he talked. “I sincerely doubt they’re here waiting for us.”

“It’s the last place we know for sure Tristan and Nadia stayed, and they left some stuff behind,” Joaquin said. “It might be a long shot, but we’ve gotta search it for clues.”

“So let’s do it,” Fisher said, his voice a mere croak. Even though it was pitch-black in here, he wore dark sunglasses that hid what I’m sure were bloodshot eyes. My heart went out to him. I imagined he’d spent the night the same way I had, tossing and turning, waking from horrible dreams of Darcy being tortured, Darcy terrified, Darcy alone, alone, alone.

I’d taken the spare bed in Krista’s room, not wanting to go back to my empty house by myself, and this morning she’d told me I’d been crying out in my sleep. So even when I’d thought I was resting, I clearly wasn’t.

“Back there.” Joaquin pointed, and we followed Fisher inside, forming a long, snaking single line.

Fisher had to duck considerably until we made it into the widest chamber, and even then the ceiling was so low he had to crouch. I flashed my beam toward the back of the cave and froze. The tools, food, and clothing that had been there yesterday were gone.

“They came back for their stuff!” I blurted.

“What?” Joaquin moved quickly to the spot and looked around. The place was empty. “Damn, T. You’ve got some balls, I’ll give you that.”

“How can you take this so lightly?” I demanded. “They must have known we’d been here, and they still came back?”

“It’s like they’re taunting us,” Bea agreed.

“Spitting in our faces,” Pete said, his breath short.

“You guys! I found something.”

Cori crouched at the spot where my flashlight beam had come to rest, and tugged something out of a crack in the wall. It was a tiny piece of paper, rolled up into a tight tube. As she unrolled it, Fisher went to stand next to her, holding his light over the page. They gave it a quick glance, and Fisher paled. Cori’s eyes darted uncertainly to me, like she suddenly found me very intimidating.

“What is it?” Lauren asked.

Cori cleared her throat. “It’s for Rory,” she said meekly, holding the paper out in my direction but training her eyes on my shoes.

My pulse pounded in my very fingertips as I took the fragile page from her. Instantly, I recognized Tristan’s handwriting. My eyes darted over the scrawled lines, falling on key words like trust, father, and love.

“What’s it say?” Lauren asked, stepping up next to me to read over my shoulder.

“‘Dear Rory. I didn’t do this.’” My voice was cracking already. I coughed and continued to read. “‘I didn’t do this. Those coins were planted in my room. I keep seeing the look on your face that day in my bedroom, and it’s killing me, knowing you don’t believe me.’”

My voice caught and I realized this wasn’t going to work. I shoved the page at Lauren and covered my face with my hands. He was lying. He had to be. First he’d taken my father, then my sister, and now he was trying to win me back. But why? Why was he doing this to me?

“‘I will do anything to regain your trust,’” Lauren read slowly, quietly. “‘I’m going to find a way into the Shadowlands. I’m going to get your father and Aaron and the others back if it kills me.’”

She paused and I pulled my quivering hands down, watching her as she finished.

“‘I love you,’” she read. “‘Tristan.’”

The page fluttered as Lauren handed it back to me. I pocketed it quickly, hugging myself as tightly as I could to stop the shaking, and glanced up at Joaquin. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost.

“He didn’t risk coming here to get his stuff,” Bea said, her voice barely a whisper. “He risked coming here so he could leave that for you.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Lauren said firmly. “He’s trying to fix things.”

“You don’t know that.” I didn’t mean to snap, but I did. A by-product of the tension that was begging for any kind of release. “You only want to believe it.”

“Look at the note again,” Lauren said, gesturing at my pocket. “He didn’t mention your sister.”

“So?”

“So, if he was doing this, he’d know your sister had gone over, too. He’d have included her,” Lauren asserted.

“Not if he was being smart,” Fisher pointed out. “Not if he realized a person who’d fled five days ago wouldn’t know about Darcy.”

“I can’t take this anymore,” I cried, holding my hands to my head, feeling as if it was about to split in two. “I can’t.”

“We have to find them,” Fisher said.

Bea sighed. “But we’ve looked everywhere. We’ve searched every inch of the island. It’s not like he went back to the mainland,” she added sarcastically. “So unless he’s hiding underwater somewhere…”

I felt something catch in the back of my mind. We had searched every inch of the island, because the island was the entire world in this in-between. Except, of course, that it wasn’t. There was the water. And the things that traveled over the water. Like the ferry, the Jet Skis, the surfboards and kayaks and canoes. And there was also one particularly foreboding structure that stood above the water. A place where no Lifer would ever think to look, because no Lifer had ever stepped foot on it for more than ten seconds.

There was the bridge.

“You’re out of your mind, you know,” Joaquin called after me as I trudged through hollows and puddles toward the bridge. I had climbed up the cliff in record time, my adrenaline spurring me to inhuman feats of strength and daring, but Joaquin had stayed right on my heels. If any of the others had decided to follow us, they hadn’t yet made it to the top. “What, exactly, do you think this is going to accomplish?”

I ignored him and kept walking. Up ahead, I saw that Officer Dorn was stationed at the bridge with Liam. They did a double take when they saw me coming and moved to intercept me.

“Hey,” Liam said, lifting a hand. His new Lifer bracelet was caught on the end of his sleeve, the leather hard and pristine. Last night, after Darcy had gone missing, Joaquin, Lauren, and Bea had given him what I’d heard was the quickest initiation ever.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dorn asked, stepping in front of me.

I lifted my face, letting the rain sluice down it and along my neck. “I’m going to find the entrance to the Shadowlands.”

Dorn laughed. At that moment, Joaquin caught up to me.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked, his dark eyes desperate. “You can’t do that!”

“Why not?” I demanded. “Has anyone ever tried?”

Joaquin crossed his arms over his chest, the rivulets of water forming new patterns down his sleeves. “Not that I know of. I mean, I’ve gone a few steps into the mist when a visitor is giving me trouble, but that’s about it.”