Chapter 5 WHAT DID YOU SEE

LONDON'S POV

The room they took us to didn't feel like an office. It felt like a stage set, complete with a single wooden desk, four chairs, and a window overlooking the sea that was probably meant to be calming, but instead made me feel like I was being filmed.

Gideon Shaw sat behind the desk with a folder closed in front of him. He didn't open it. He just watched us file in and take the four chairs arranged in a loose semicircle, like he'd planned exactly how far apart to put us.

"Thank you for coming," he said, as if we'd had a choice. "This won't take long."

Jade dropped into her chair and crossed her legs, chin lifted. "Are we being arrested? Because I want to point out I haven't done a single illegal thing since landing on this island. Well. Nothing worth mentioning."

"You're not being accused of anything," Gideon said, not even glancing at her. "This is routine. We're speaking to everyone who was at the party last night."

"Everyone?" Tessa repeated. "There were, what, two hundred people there."

"Everyone we can locate." Gideon finally opened the folder. He didn't look down at it. "Let's start simple.

Where were each of you when the incident occurred?"

Jade usually had something to say about everything. Seeing her this quiet scared me more than her panic had. She sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap, and for once, her mouth didn't open first.

"I was at the bar," Tessa said. "Getting a drink. I heard the scream and ran toward the patio like everyone else."

"Which bar," Gideon said. Not a question. A correction.

Tessa blinked. "The... the one near the fountain."

"That bar closed at ten," Gideon said. "The incident occurred at eleven forty."

The room went very still.

"I meant the other one," Tessa said quickly. "By the gardens. I don't know this place, I don't know what anything's called."

Gideon held her gaze for a beat longer than usual, then let it go, moving down the row like he had all the time in the world. "Miss Morgan."

Jade sat up a little straighter. "I was celebrating my newfound freedom from New York men," she said. "I was dancing near the patio."

"Where did you go after that?"

"Somewhere on the property. It's a big place. I got turned around."

"Turned around where?"

Jade shrugged. "I don't know. The gardens, maybe. I wasn't exactly giving myself a guided tour."

Gideon glanced down at the folder in front of him.

"We have cameras covering most of the property, Miss Morgan."

Jade's smile faltered. "Okay," she said slowly. "So?"

"So your story doesn't explain where you were?"

"I told you. I got turned around."

Gideon looked at her for a moment. "And yet you found your way back.

Jade gave him a nervous smile. "I'm very good with directions when sufficiently motivated."

I watched her hands twist together in her lap and felt something cold settle in my stomach. She wasn't lying about being drunk. But she was lying about something.

"Miss Harper."

Isla's voice came out so quiet I had to lean in to catch it. "I went back to the room early. I wasn't feeling well. I was there before it happened."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"No one can confirm that."

"I was alone," Isla said again, and this time her voice didn't shake at all, which was somehow worse than if it had.

Gideon's eyes moved to me last."Miss Caldwell."

I sensed all three friends become still around me.

"I was on the side walkway," I said. "By the villa. I heard the scream, and I looked up, and I saw..." I stopped.

"You saw what."

I could feel Julian's shoulders in my memory, that terrible, familiar shape against the dark. I thought about saying his name. I thought about what would happen to the four of us, trapped on this island, if I said the word Hamilton out loud in this room.

"I saw someone fall," I said. "It was dark. I didn't see a face."

"But did you see something before she fell?" Gideon said. It wasn't a guess. He said it the way he'd stated the bar closing time, like a fact he already owned.

My mouth went dry. "How would you know that."

Gideon almost smiled. Almost. "I don't. Yet." He closed the folder. "That's all for now. I'll likely need to speak with each of you again, individually, once the investigators arrive." His eyes moved over the four of us one more time. "In the meantime, enjoy the island. I'd hate for you to think you weren't welcome."

We stood to leave. I had my hand on the door when Gideon's voice stopped us.

"Miss Harper. A word alone, if you don't mind."

Isla froze mid-step.

Tessa turned back. "Why does she need to stay?"

"Routine," Gideon said again, like the word cost him nothing. "It won't take long."

Isla looked at me. For one second, something raw and terrified crossed her face before she smoothed it away. "It's fine," she said. "Go ahead. I'll catch up."

Nobody moved. Jade and Tessa stayed still too. However, the guard at the door was already stepping forward to guide us out, and I noticed it because I was the last to pass through the doorway, moving more slowly than the rest and trying to catch any sounds I could.

"Curious how long you'd known Miss Weston," Gideon was saying behind me, his voice unhurried, almost conversational.

I stopped breathing.

We hadn't told him anything about Nina. No one had said that name and Isla's in the same sentence.

Isla's response, if she said anything, was too soft for me to hear. The door closed behind me immediately, and the guard was already guiding me down the corridor.

I stood in the corridor, staring at the closed door, and I had the distinct, sick feeling that we'd just handed one of our own over to something none of us understood and that whatever Gideon Shaw already knew about Nina Weston, he hadn't learned it from anything we'd told him tonight.

I couldn't sit still after that.

Tessa took Jade back to the suite, and I told them I needed air, which wasn't exactly a lie. What I actually needed was to find Julian before I lost my nerve.

I found him by the pool instead, and lost it anyway.

He was seated at the edge of a lounge chair, half-turned toward two women in white resort robes who were laughing at something he'd apparently just said. One of them touched his forearm. He didn't move it away.

Something ugly and unwelcome twisted in my chest.

I hated that it did.

I walked straight up to him, ignoring the way both women looked at me like I'd tracked mud across the marble. "I want to talk to you."

Julian looked up slowly, unbothered. "We certainly don't have anything to talk about, Miss Caldwell."

I grabbed the folded towel off the empty chair beside me and threw it at his chest before I'd fully decided to.

For a moment he just looked down at it. Then, to my absolute fury, the corner of his mouth twitched.

But he stood.

He murmured something to the two women an apology, probably, or an excuse and followed me toward the shaded colonnade at the edge of the pool deck, out of earshot.

"Why are innocent people locked down on this island," I said, not waiting for him to speak first. "My friends and I require an exit."

"In case you've forgotten," Julian said, "someone died last night. The culprit is still somewhere on this property. You'd rather be out on open water with them than in a house full of security?"

"I'd rather be anywhere that isn't controlled by your family."

Something flickered across his face. "Careful, London."

"Where were you," I said. "When she fell. Where were you standing?"

"Handling the chaos my father's guests were causing," he said smoothly. "Same as always."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

I stepped closer, close enough to see the muscle working in his jaw. "Did you know her? Nina?"

"We'd never spoken." He said it flatly, easily, like it cost him nothing.

"That's not what she told me," I said. "On the yacht. She knew your name before I said it. She knew mine."

Something shifted behind his eyes too fast to name,

"People talk about my family, London. It doesn't mean I know them."

"You're lying to me."

"I'm asking you to let this go." His voice dropped, which somehow made it worse. "You came here for a vacation. Focus on that. Let the authorities do what they came here to do."

He held my gaze a second longer than he needed to long enough that I almost believed there was something underneath the composure, fighting to get out and then he turned and walked away, leaving me standing there with the towel and the distinct, sinking certainty that Everyone on this island was clearly hiding something, including the one person I still wanted, against every ounce of sense I had left, to trust.