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and her band. Will hadnever been sure why. He thought it was perhaps because Asia and Will shared a connection. Asia had lost a beloved sister. Will had lost a beloved brother. And Asia knew that Gretchen was like a sister to him. In the end, she simply wasn’t a murderer.
    And so Asia went down into the sea, just as Tim had.
    Will’s throat constricted as he thought of her crystalline green eyes. In a strange way, he had loved her. She knew what it was like to lose someone … to be haunted by that loss. He had been drawn to the mystery of her.
    A renegade wave crept toward his foot, and Will stepped back just in time to avoid wetting his boot. He was dressed in a dirty old T-shirt and jeans that redefined filth. His hiking boots were covered in mud.
    He looked out over the water again, sucking in a deep lungful of salty air. Though he knew the sea was treacherous, it still felt clean to him. He loved being here, even after all that had happened. But he had to get home. Will had to mow the front patch of lawn before the light disappeared, and—of course—his mother would pitch a fit if he wasn’t washed up in time for dinner.
    Just as Will started away, something caught his eye. A movement. He turned back toward the sea. The fish must have moved on, because the gulls were nowhere in sight. The surface of the water was a fine blue line against the edge of the horizon.
    And then he thought he saw it. Just for a moment—the half-moon shape of a head rising from the water.But before the face broke the surface, it disappeared again.
    Will’s heart tightened, and—without thinking—he took a step forward, his boot splashing into the shallow water. The object appeared once again, and this time Will’s chest felt empty, hollow. It was a buoy. Just a buoy.
    He put a hand to his forehead, feeling the smooth scar tissue that crossed his face beneath his palm. “It’s nothing,” he muttered to himself.
    Then he turned and slogged through the sand back to the truck, wondering if he should have told Gretchen the truth about Asia when he had the chance. But it was so much easier not to.
    His heart sank when he saw the bright orange paper peeping from beneath an ancient windshield wiper. “Oh, crap.”
    Will sighed. He’d parked in a permit-only zone and had been fool enough to think that the town patrol wouldn’t check after the end of the summer season. They never wrote up his motorcycle when he parked it by the private beach. “Damn.”
    His father was going to be furious now. He had warned Will a hundred times to be careful when he borrowed his uncle’s truck. A few years back, Carl had gotten a few serious traffic violations. They were still on his record, and another permit infraction could mean a suspended license. Will shook his head, already hearing the lecture his father was going to deliver when he got home. The unsaid implication was always
Tim never would have let this happen
, eventhough Will was the careful brother, the one who avoided trouble.
    I’ll just have to go down to the station with Uncle Carl to get this sorted out
, Will thought. He didn’t mind paying the ticket. It wasn’t that much money. He just didn’t want his uncle to suffer for his mistake.
    It’s amazing how small decisions can have such huge consequences
, Will mused. It was a lesson he learned over and over. The trouble was, you never knew in advance which decision would spark a backlash, or what the repercussion would be.
    You never knew … until it was too late.

Chapter Three

    From the
Walfang Gazette
Boat Runs Aground in Fog
    Heavy fog caused a local fishing boat, the
Steely Joan
, to run aground, resulting in a great deal of damage to the hull. “I’ve been fishing these waters for twenty-seven years,” said
Steely Joan
captain John Wood, “and I’ve never seen fog conditions like this.” Local meteorologists are at a loss to explain what seems to be unusual weather for this time of year.…
    “You’re looking