I need to talk to Tom Helmsworth before we leave. Don’t worry—it’s just a chat. I’ll be home as soon as I can.
I hoped to God the chat part wasn’t a lie.
I considered driving since it was a hot and humid August afternoon, but the car would have barely started to cool down by the time I pulled into the parking lot of the police station a few blocks away. Ten minutes later, I walked into the building a hot sweaty mess and approached the receptionist’s desk. I lifted my heavy braid off the back of my neck. “I’m here to see Tom Helmsworth.”
The elderly female receptionist eyed me up and down, frowning slightly, as though she found me lacking. I knew I was a mess, but I couldn’t be that bad. “Officer Helmsworth will be with you in a minute.”
“I’m kind of in a hurry. Could you tell him I’m here?”
Her mouth puckered and she looked down her nose at me while she picked up the phone. “Officer Helmsworth, someone is here to see you. She didn’t give her name.” She paused. “Yes, that’s her.” She hung up and offered me a tight smile. “He’ll be here in a moment.”
A few seconds later, Tom appeared in the doorway holding a stack of files. Tom was a good-looking guy with dark hair and a toned body. We’d gone to high school together, although he was a couple of years older than me—making him twenty-five—but the last month had been hard on him. Dark circles underscored his eyes, and I even noticed a few crow’s-feet. “Come on back, Ellie.” At least he sounded a little less cranky than he had on the phone. He led me to a room and pushed open the door, motioning me inside. “Thanks for showing up so quickly.”
“Well, when you put a time limit on my arrival, I considered walking in twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds after your call, but I actually have things to do.”
He scowled and I wondered why I was being so hateful to him. Tom was just trying to do his job, and he wasn’t wrong in thinking that I had some connection to all the odd things that had happened since the reappearance of the colony. I just wasn’t sure how safe it was for him to know about it.
I entered the room and was taken aback when I saw that it was an interview room with a table in the middle and two chairs, one on each side. My heart lurched and my breath stuttered. “Am I in trouble?”
“Ellie, I just need to talk to you, and you haven’t exactly been cooperative in the past. This time we’re going to have an official interview.” He waved to the chair. “Why don’t you take a seat.”
I walked around the table and slid into the metal chair, folding my hands on top of the table. I tried not to look nervous, but I wasn’t sure how effective my strategy was. “What do you want to know?”
Tom sat down across from me, setting the files to the side of the table. His face was devoid of any expression. “Other than the usual public drunkenness, petty theft, and vandalism, things have been quiet on Roanoke Island for several weeks. Until this past week.”
I shifted my weight to the side, keeping my eyes on his face. So far, he wasn’t giving anything away.
“This week there have been four deaths in town—one every night for the last four nights. All four patients were ill, but none of them was in serious condition on the morning that they died.”
Tom was quiet for several seconds and I realized he was waiting for me to respond. “Is this some kind of flu like H1N1? I’m not sure how I can help you with that. Shouldn’t you call the health department?”
“The health department has already been notified. They were the ones who contacted us.”
“I’m still not sure why I’m here, Tom.” For once, I was genuinely confused. I had no idea how or why he was connecting this problem to me.
“The patients were all ill with some minor condition.” Tom slid the stack of files to the center of the table. “One had strep throat, another had bronchitis.” He spread out the stack as he spoke, four manila folders with a note paper-clipped to each file. “The third victim had food poisoning and the fourth an abscessed tooth. They were ill during the day, but not deathly so, at least not until the sun went down.”
A chill started at the back of my neck and crawled slowly down my spine. It didn’t escape my notice that he’d called the third patient a victim. “Then what happened?”
“Then they deteriorated quite rapidly, hallucinating and screaming and thrashing in pain. Within two hours they were dead.”
I sucked in a breath. If there was some kind of deadly virus going around, I was glad David and I were leaving town. “I’m still not sure what this has to do with me, Tom.”
“After the second patient died, the coroner became concerned and did an autopsy.” Tom leaned his forearm on the table, leveling his gaze with mine. “And what he found is the reason why you’re here.”
I resisted the urge to ask. Tom would tell me soon enough, and he seemed to be making a production out of it.
He waited for a long moment, a flicker of disappointment flashing in his eyes when he didn’t get a reaction from me. “The patients had no hearts.”
All the blood in my body instantly pooled at my feet. Could the demonic badgers be back? They had eaten out their victims’ hearts after ripping their abdomens open. Collin had assured me they were gone forever, earning us each a new title: destroyers of life. “Did they leave their houses? Were their abdomens ripped open?”