第3章 Chapter 3: The First Death

The body was discovered at 7:14 AM.

Marcus Webb. Library. A letter opener buried to the hilt in the base of his skull—a clinical strike that severed the brainstem. Death would have been instantaneous.

I knew this because I was the one who examined the body while the others stood in the doorway, their faces arranged in various configurations of horror.

"Nobody touch anything," I said, slipping into the professional detachment that had served me through fifteen years of studying killers.

"Shouldn't we call the police?" Harriet's voice was steady. Too steady for a twenty-nine-year-old seeing her first corpse.

"No phone signal," Victor said. "And the bridge—"

"Is flooded. Yes." I stood up, my knees cracking. "Which means the killer is one of us."

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Sofia was the first to crack. "This is insane. We need to lock ourselves in our rooms—"

"And wait to be picked off individually? No." I turned to face them all. "Cornelius brought us here for a reason. Whatever connects us—whatever secret he was holding—that's what got Marcus killed."

"What are you suggesting?" Thomas asked.

"I'm suggesting we stop pretending we don't know each other."

Five pairs of eyes. Five different flavors of fear.

It was Harriet who spoke first. "Ashworth contacted me three months ago. He said he had proof of a cover-up. Something that happened in 2017."

2017. My blood went cold.

"The Whitfield case," I whispered.

And just like that, the room fractured.