Murder House

90

It’s late, so late that now it’s technically called early. Predawn, nearly five in the morning.

The man who sometimes thinks of himself as Holden positions the note card carefully on the desk, his fingers covered in rubber gloves. He considers cutting the words out of a magazine or newspaper, like an old-fashioned ransom note, but there is no time for that. So he will write with his nondominant hand, to avoid detection by any handwriting expert.

Again, this is him being smart.

The words come out wobbly — especially the words bodies and Aiden, for some reason — but they’re legible, which is all that matters.

He closes up the envelope but, of course, does not lick the adhesive. That would be something, wouldn’t it? After all this time, to make a mistake like that, leaving his DNA on the envelope?

On his way, he makes a detour and turns down Ocean Drive. It’s still dark, and nobody will see him. He likes to visit this time of the day.

When he reaches 7 Ocean Drive, he steps out of his car and crosses the street to the magnificent wrought-iron gates, leans against them, pokes his nose between the bars.

He can’t fit between the bars anymore.

“Bet you never expected this, did you, Holden?” he whispers.

Who could have expected this turn of events? But it’s happening.

He pushes himself off the gate and returns to his car. It’s not far from dawn, and he wants to deliver the note under the cover of darkness. He throws the car into drive and heads back toward town.

It isn’t difficult to find the car, parked on the street, and nobody is out at this hour. He tucks the note on the windshield, safely and securely beneath the wiper blade, like a flyer advertising a liquidation sale at a sporting goods store or a buy-one, get-one-free at some fast-food restaurant.

This note, of course, has a bit more gravity to it than a coupon.

This note’s going to turn everything on its head.

91

I leave Aiden’s house and get home before dawn. My apartment is a slum, papers strewn about, the bed unmade, unwashed glasses in the kitchen sink, a musty smell.

I’m exhausted but propped up by the hum of adrenaline. I look again at the newspaper photo I pilfered from Aiden’s scrapbook, with the caption NEWBORN ABANDONED AT POLICE STATION.

I must be right. It makes everything fit. Aiden’s mother, a prostitute, had a second child, one fathered by Holden VI. She gave the boy up for some reason — because she didn’t want a child fathered by Holden, or because she didn’t want Holden to have any influence over him. But in some way I can’t possibly know, father and son were reunited.

But then — why is Aiden a part of this? How does he figure in?

And more importantly — who is that second child, Aiden’s half brother?

Is it Isaac Marks? He seems to be working with Aiden against me.

Is it Noah? He’s the one who must have tipped off Aiden that I’d be with Justin last night, when Aiden came through the window and tried to kill me.

Isaac and Noah. Each of them a grade younger than Aiden.

Three kids who grew up together, who went to school together. Did they learn more than reading, writing, and ’rithmetic while they were in school together?

I’m buzzed but exhausted at first light. Everyone else is just beginning to waken, to start a new day, and I’m about to collapse. My brain is fuzzy from sleep deprivation. I have a lot to do, but I can’t function without sleep...

Bam bam bam

Let me out

Buzz buzz buzz

Please let me out

Buzz buzz buzz

My eyes pop open, mid-dream, adrenaline swirling. My cell phone vibrating. I pat the bed until I find it, pick it up, stare at it through foggy eyes.

The caller ID says NOAH WALKER.

A flutter through my chest. I’m not ready to answer it. I wait until the buzzing ends. A NEW VOICE MAIL message pops up.

I look at the clock. It’s one in the afternoon. Wow. I slept for almost six hours. It felt like six minutes.

Then I play the voice mail.

Murphy, it’s Noah. Just want to make sure you’re okay. I have an idea I wanna run by you. Give me a call.

I punch out the phone and drop it on the bed. He has an idea he wants to run by me? Yeah, I have something to run by you, too, Noah — why don’t you explain to me who told Aiden Willis that I’d be at Justin’s house last night?

And by chance, were you adopted? Were you left abandoned at the police station as a child? Did you later discover that your biological father was part of a family line of deranged killers going back centuries?

Did you decide to pick up the mantle where they left off?

And was I, Detective Jenna Murphy, the dumb shit who sprang you from prison?

I move slowly, as if I’d been drugged last night, as if I’m recovering from a hangover. I eat some toast and drink some coffee and sit under a cascade of scalding shower water until the hot water runs out — which, in my apartment, doesn’t take very long.

My cell phone rings again. I find it in the bathroom through the steam. Noah, again. I ignore it, again.

Somehow, it’s four in the afternoon now.

I have to find Holden Dahlquist’s son. If that baby was abandoned at the police station, he would have been turned over to Child Protective Services, like the news clipping said. He would have entered the system — he would have been adopted, or placed in a foster home. Something that would have generated a paper trail.

Did the child trace that paper trail back to Holden? Or did Holden trace that paper trail back to the boy?

I don’t know. And I don’t care.

Because however it happened — a paternity suit, an adoption, whatever — Holden would have involved his attorney. And I have his lawyer’s name, thanks to Noah.

So how do I get this information from Holden’s lawyer, who will assert his attorney-client privilege?

No clue. All I know is that I’m getting closer, shaking some trees, and people are getting nervous.

Maybe all I can do is wait for their next move.

My phone rings again. It’s Lauren Ricketts.

“Hey there,” I say.

“Murphy!” Her voice excited, breathless.

“What’s going on?”

“You’re not going to believe this.”

I push my laptop computer aside. “Try me.”

“Annie Church and Dede Paris,” she says. “We just found their bodies.”

I close my eyes. Somebody — Aiden, Isaac, Noah — just made their next move.

92

My third time in two days driving in this neighborhood. But this time, it’s not directly to Aiden Willis’s house. And this time, traffic is at a standstill, logjammed as far as the eye can see, traffic down to a single, narrow lane on the turnpike.

I inch forward until I reach the barricades blocking access to the very road on which Aiden Willis lives. TV crews have lined up their vans and satellite feeds, well-coiffed reporters taking their turns before the cameras with their microphones. Once past the barricade, the turnpike opens up again, so I head north another quarter mile to Tasty’s, where I park in the lot and head back to the scene on foot.

Two bodies discovered in the woods, almost directly behind Aiden Willis’s property line in the backyard, buried ten feet belowground.

That was all I got from Lauren Ricketts, one of the officers on the scene. She didn’t have much time to talk to me; I was lucky to get as much as she gave me.

I walk down to the barricaded street. A reporter from one of the local stations, a guy with hair so brittle from hair spray that he could weaponize it, recognizes me. He probably doesn’t know I’ve lost my badge. Either way, he allows me inside the van and shows me the feed his station’s helicopter is getting, an overhead shot.

The overhead view: A lot of the work has already been completed. A bulldozer has already excavated the dirt, and a crane has somehow lifted the bodies out of the crater. The team is on the ground, officers and forensic investigators and medical examiners.

Two gurneys are loaded into a hearse and driven off the property. I step out of the news van. Five minutes later, I see the hearse approaching the turnpike barricade, officers removing the barriers to allow it to leave.

Annie and Dede. Why now? And how did it happen?

I send a text message to Ricketts: I’m here on the scene when you have a minute. It will be a while, I expect, before her work is done.

But thirty seconds later, I get a reply: Where?

I text back, then wait. Ricketts, looking the worse for wear — dusty and dirty, like a soldier emerging from battle — but excited, too, approaches the barricade.

“It’s Annie and Dede?” I ask.

She nods. “I think so. One of the fingers was missing.”

Right. He cut off one of Dede’s fingers and left it for the cops to find, a few years ago.

“The knife was there, too,” she says. “The murder weapon.”

Wow. He left the murder weapon with the girls? Our killer was probably too careful to leave fingerprints on the knife, but you never know.

“I found the bodies,” Ricketts says. “It was me.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “How the heck did that happen?”

“Well, that’s the thing — someone put a note on my windshield this morning.”

I draw back. “What?”

Ricketts looks around at the bedlam, the reporters and onlookers, practically shutting down the turnpike. “A note said I could find their bodies back here. By the large elm tree with the X in red spray paint.” She shrugs. “Why would someone do that? Why would someone write me a note?”

I think about that. But she knows the answer, same as I do. The note was written to her because she was working on this case with me.

“Whoever did this — he wants you to know,” she says. “Since I’m the responding officer, it’s my case. I have access to all the data. He wants you to have the information, Murphy. He knows I’ll tell you.”

She’s right. It makes sense.

“Aiden didn’t work alone,” I say. “There are at least two people doing this. Aiden and someone else, maybe two somebody elses. Someone who knows we’re working on this case together.”

She thinks about it, nods. “So what do we do now?”

“Do your job,” I say. “Find out all you can. And then, when it’s safe, you and I should work through this.”

“Okay. Right. Okay.”

Ricketts takes a deep breath. This is a big moment for her. It’s not every day a rookie patrol officer breaks a major unsolved case.

“Watch your back, Officer,” I say. “They may be trying to communicate with me, but they’re using you to do it.”

I walk back to my car as a light mist begins to fall, my mind racing with questions. He’s messing with me now, telling me something, sending me in a certain direction. But which direction? And why? How does showing me Dede’s and Annie’s bodies help him?

My head starts to ache. Another new piece of evidence, yielding nothing but more questions.

When I reach my car, Noah Walker is leaning against it, his arms crossed.

“Hello, stranger,” he says to me.

93

“I’ve been calling you,” Noah says. He pushes himself off my car. He’s in his construction gear, jeans and T-shirt, boots, protective vest. Off work now, catching dinner at Tasty’s.

I feel something between us, always that radiating heat, but this time more penetrating, turning my stomach sour.

“I guess you heard about Annie and Dede,” I say.

“Yeah. You have any information?”

“None,” I say. “I’m not on the inside anymore.”

“But you have that friend, that young cop. What’s her name again?”

Playing dumb. I’m not going to play back. “What do you want, Noah?”

He opens his hands. “Same thing you want,” he says, like it’s obvious. “I thought we were a team.”

So did I. Before you tried to help Aiden kill me.

“What’s wrong?” he says.

Ask him. Just ask him and see what he says.

“Were you adopted, Noah?”

He gives me a funny look. “Adopted? No.”

“You sure?”

“Am I sure I wasn’t adopted? I think I’d be sure about that.”

I look him over, try to read him. I’m not getting a solid hit either way.

“It’s public information,” I say. “I can find out.”

“I don’t think so,” he answers. “I don’t think adoptions are public information.”

“For a guy who wasn’t adopted, you seem to know a lot about them.”

“Murphy, what the hell?” He steps toward me. “What’s with this bizarre interrogation? I’ve been leaving you messages—”

“By the way,” I say, getting my Irish up now, “I went to Justin’s last night, like I told you I would. And guess who paid me a visit?”

He shakes his head. Playing dumb again.

“Aiden,” I say. “He came through a window at me. With a knife.”

“He what? Are you okay?”

“I wonder how he knew I’d be there, Noah. Got any ideas?”

He waves his hand, like he’s erasing something. “Wait a second, wait a second. You don’t think it was me—”

“Oh, no, of course not. It was probably the long list of other people who knew I was going to be at Justin’s last night. Oh, wait — nobody else knew.”

“Murphy, just hold on a second.”

He reaches for me, but I pull back.

“Don’t you touch me,” I say. “Don’t come near me ever again. Just know something, Noah — I will figure this out. You tell your buddies, whoever’s a part of this: I’m close. I’m going to nail all of you. Or die trying.”

Noah steps between me and my car.

“Okay, you got to talk,” he says. “Now I get to talk.”

“Get out of my way, or you’ll be sorry.”

“Hey!”

Noah and I both turn. Justin is jogging toward us, from the restaurant.

“Is there a problem?” he asks.

Noah glares at him. Something primitive in his eyes. These two are casual acquaintances — each has said a kind word about the other — but something passed between Noah and me last night, until I mentioned Justin. I remember the look on his face, the blow he suffered, even though I insisted Justin and I are just friends.

“Nothing that concerns you,” Noah says to Justin.

Justin stops short of us, looks at me. “Jenna?”

“It’s none of your business,” Noah says.

“You’re on my property, Noah. And you’re bothering my friend. So I think it is my business.”

“Stay out of this, Justin.” Noah squares off on Justin. “This is a private conversation.”

Two men, the macho thing, battling over the damsel’s honor. Only this damsel ain’t interested.

“Uh, guys? Over here?” I wave my hand. “I’m leaving. I’ll call you later, Justin. And Noah? Stay away from me.”

I climb into my car and slam the door. I start up the engine and throw it into reverse, gravel flying in my wake, then head north on the turnpike, unsure of my destination, only certain that wherever I’m going, I’m going alone.

94

I drive home as darkness sweeps over Bridgehampton.

Aiden’s still out there, and while I seriously doubt he’d be dumb enough to hang around the Hamptons to take another shot at me, I take simple precautions. I lock the dead bolt and prop a chair against the door, and I move the dresser against the small window. It’s not much of a deterrent, but at least it will keep Aiden from doing another nose dive through a plate of glass.

I have almost nothing in my cupboard but some noodles, so I boil some water and drop them in.

Eat and sleep, Murphy. Or you’ll crumble like a stale cookie.

But I have no appetite. My stomach is a pool of nerves and chaos.

You’re getting closer, Murphy.

I push the plate of noodles aside.

But you’re not there yet.

Then two things happen at once, causing me to jump from my seat.

My cell phone buzzes, and my doorbell rings.

The phone is Ricketts. I punch it on while I move to the door.

I look through the peephole at the man standing at my door.

It’s Isaac Marks, our beloved chief of police.

“Ricketts, let me call you back,” I say into the phone. “Your boss is at the door.”

“No, Jenna, wait—”

I punch the phone off, release the dead bolt, and open the door.

And stare at the man who just might be responsible for the murder of eight people. Including the man he replaced as chief.

“Murphy,” Isaac says, nodding. Wearing his uniform. Probably did some press today on Annie and Dede.

“Need you to come down to the substation,” he says.

“You can talk to me right here.”

He takes a deep breath, grimaces. “Don’t make this difficult. Come down with me voluntarily. Make a good decision for once in your life.”

“You don’t have anything better to do?” I ask. “After finding two dead bodies today?”

He gives me a funny look.

“The two dead bodies,” he says, “are the reason I’m here.”

95

I sit in the same interview room where I’ve sat many times, only on the other side of the table. I used to be good at this, questioning witnesses, sizing them up, reading them, making them sweat, gaining their trust, taking them on a roller-coaster ride from fright to horror to despondence to remorse to confession.

The door opens, and in walks Isaac Marks. He stands against the wall, arms crossed.

What is he capable of? Did he kill all those people, with Aiden as his accomplice? And maybe Noah, too?

Did he do something to me, along with Aiden, at 7 Ocean Drive when I was a little girl?

I’ve never had a bead on the guy. I was his partner for less than a year, and he was a phone-it-in cop, a guy who liked to strut around with the badge, enjoyed the power more than the responsibility. Never one to put in the extra hours necessary. Never one to go the extra mile.

But a killer? If it’s true, I missed it. Never saw it.

Then again, I wasn’t looking for it.

“I want some answers, Murphy,” he says. “Some straight answers.”

“So do I.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t work that way. Maybe you forgot.”

“It does now. Or I take Five.”

Most people are afraid to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. They think it makes them look guilty. They’re right, but they’re wrong. Yeah, you look bad if you won’t talk. But how you appear at that moment to a cop pales in comparison to the damage you do by answering detailed questions, locking yourself in.

Maybe I should be heeding that advice right now.

“The bodies were Annie and Dede?” I ask.

Isaac closes his eyes, nods. “We have a rush on DNA. We won’t have it for another day or so. But there was a missing finger, and some personal articles on the bodies that the families confirmed. It’s not official, but unofficially? There’s no doubt.”

“How did you make the discovery?” I ask.

Still planted against the wall, still stoic, but now with a gleam in his eye. He knows Ricketts and I are friends. He knows I know.

“Anonymous tip,” he says.

“How convenient.”

He cocks his head. “Convenient? How so?”

I shrug. “Maybe someone was getting too close to solving this whole thing. Maybe Aiden’s being given up as a sacrificial lamb. A scapegoat.”

“A scapegoat.” Isaac’s eyes narrow. “Meaning he’s innocent.”

“Meaning,” I say, “that he wasn’t the only one. He has a partner.”

Isaac doesn’t move. Expression doesn’t break. Tough to read, because interrogators are playing a role, acting out a scene, so it could be just him doing his job. Or it could be he’s sweating bullets underneath that uniform.

“A partner,” he says. “Two people?”

“At least two,” I say, “and the partner just fucked Aiden.”

Isaac pushes himself off the wall and pulls out the chair across from me. He takes his time getting seated, settling in, training his stare on me.

“How did the partner fuck Aiden?” he asks.

My heartbeat ratcheting up. He has me in an enclosed room, in his custody. But it’s a police station. There are witnesses, other cops watching through the one-way. It’s not like he can silence me.

Do I want to do this? Right here, right now?

Hell yes, I do. With other cops as witnesses.

“Let’s say Aiden was getting nervous,” I say. “He talks to his partner. He says, ‘They’re getting close.’ So his partner tells Aiden to leave town. Get out of Dodge for a while. Let things settle down.”

Isaac nods, listening intently.

“Maybe the partner tells Aiden, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.’”

Isaac does a double blink with his eyes. I’ve just quoted what he said to Aiden on the phone last night — when he didn’t see me hiding outside.

“Go on,” he says, his voice flat and cold.

“But once Aiden scrams, his partner makes an anonymous tip to the cops. Bodies are discovered a stone’s throw from Aiden’s property line. And ten gets you twenty there’s incriminating evidence found at that burial scene, evidence that implicates Aiden and Aiden alone. My guess? Aiden’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

Isaac is silent, his eyes deadened.

“So now Aiden’s an obvious suspect,” I say. “Gift-wrapped, practically. And his partner walks away scot-free.”

Isaac takes a breath, leans back in his chair.

“Cat got your tongue, Chief?”

His fingers tap the table. “You think Aiden’s a part of this.”

“Yes. I’ve suspected him for a while now. In fact, I tried to confront him last night at his house. He ran from me before I could question him. But... you already know that, don’t you, Isaac?”

The dam has burst. I’ve all but accused him now. I don’t know if this is the smart move here, but I’m running out of options. Smart or not, it’s time to move.

Isaac tries to smile. It doesn’t work very well.

“Tell me more about this second killer,” he says.

I shrug. “He’s lasted this long, eight murders over five years, so he’s smart, and he’s able to function in society as a normal person. A classic psychopath. He could be anyone. He could be a construction worker. He could be a ditch-digger.”

I look Isaac squarely in the eye.

“He could be a cop,” I say.

“A cop? Interesting.” Isaac purses his lips. “Well, Murphy, it turns out we did find Aiden’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

“You have Aiden’s prints on file?”

“He was arrested once, long time ago, for retail theft. Shoplifting. His prints are in the database.”

“Did you run all the databases, Chief? Even the government employees’ database? Every cop in our department has their prints in that database. Did you remember to check that database, too? Or did it... slip your mind?”

My blood is boiling now. But the cops who are watching this interview need to hear this, all of it.

“You figure,” says Isaac, “that if we found another set of prints, we’d have the second person — Aiden’s partner.”

“Worth a shot.”

“Someone who can act perfectly normal in society. Like a construction worker.”

“Or a cop,” I say again.

“Yeah, you said that before,” he says. “A cop?”

“Why not? It’s the perfect cover. He could manipulate the evidence. He could influence the investigation.”

“True,” says Isaac. “That’s true.”

I open my hands. “What are you afraid of, Isaac? Check the government database. Or... are you worried that maybe your hand slipped, and your prints accidentally got on that knife?”

Now his smile comes on, full glow. He shakes his head.

“We did run the prints on the murder weapon through the government database,” he says. “And we got a match.”

He rises out of his chair and leans over the table, so he can whisper his next words.

“Aiden’s prints weren’t the only ones on that murder weapon,” he says. “We found yours, too, Jenna Murphy.”

96

I spring out of my chair. A slow burn through my chest.

“No,” I say. “No way.”

Chief Isaac Marks is suddenly enjoying himself very much. He sits back in his chair, crosses a leg. “I suppose now you’re going to claim that I manipulated the process somehow. Planted your fingerprints. Right?”

My mind racing, my throat full, everything moving too fast.

“Well, let me put you at ease, Murphy. I had no part in the gathering of the evidence or in running the prints. If you don’t believe me, you can ask your bestest buddy, Officer Ricketts.”

The walls closing in. The heat turned way up. This isn’t right. It can’t be right.

“You can’t possibly think...” My throat closes before I can finish the sentence.

“I can’t possibly think what?” he says whimsically. “That you had something to do with Annie’s and Dede’s murders? Well, let’s think about that. Have a seat, if you would.”

I put my hand against the wall to brace myself. My prints are on the murder weapon? That can’t possibly be right. Somebody, somehow, must have—

“I said sit the fuck down, Murphy.”

My legs unsteady, I find the seat and plant myself.

“So let’s think this through,” he says. “You have very persuasively argued that there were two killers — Aiden Willis and another person. You have also persuaded me that the second killer could be a police officer, that it would be the perfect cover for a psychopath.”

“I didn’t mean me—”

“So we have two girls who were murdered in the summer of 2007. Since we don’t know the exact day, or even the exact month of their death, it’s impossible to know your whereabouts at the time. You were a cop in Manhattan, but how easy would it have been to drive out here and do the deed, then drive back without anyone knowing? Very easy, I’d say.”

“No. No.” I push myself out of the chair, knocking it over with a clatter. “You can’t actually believe that. No.”

My pulse soaring. Sweat covering my brow. This is like a bad dream. This can’t be happening.

“You did this, Isaac. You think I don’t know what’s going on?”

“Oh, Murphy, I think you know exactly what’s going on.”

Two officers, uniforms whose names I’ve forgotten, step into the room. Isaac nods to them. Cool and collected, he is having the time of his life.

“Jenna Murphy,” he says, “you’re under arrest for the murders of Annie Church and Dede Paris.”

97

Noah watches. And waits. Two hours pass, while the midnight air moves from brisk to cold. He’s underdressed in his black sweatshirt and black baseball cap and black jeans. They may not keep him warm, but they serve another purpose.

Nobody can see him in the dark.

He hears a noise — probably just the wind — and scrapes his cheek against one of the shrubs. He’s been crouched low for a long time, so he stretches out, kicking out one leg at a time, like a sprinter preparing for a race, so he’ll be loose when the time comes.

No police, no security.

Probably a burglar alarm on the outside door. But on the window?

Well, let’s find out.

He steps out into the clearing, a small expanse of grass behind the building, but still outside the reach of the overhanging lights. Still in the dark. Still invisible.

The window has iron bars over it. He’ll deal with the bars if necessary, but first he wants to see if the window has an alarm.

He raises his tire iron to eye level, angles it through the bars, and jams it against the glass. The glass shatters, an unmistakable sound, but not a very loud one, especially with a light wind. And really, nobody should be around right now, past midnight in an empty industrial park.

After shattering the glass, Noah steps back, ready to retreat into the darkness.

He hears no glass-shatter alarm. No police sirens.

But there could be an alarm on the window itself, triggered when it’s opened.

So he tries that next, slipping his hand between the iron bars, carefully through the half-shattered window, until he finds the interior latch. He unlocks the window. Then, with both hands, he pushes it up from the bottom frame.

A few more shards of glass fall onto the floor inside.

But no alarm sounds. The window is not armed.

They must have figured the iron bars were enough.

They figured wrong.

Noah shines his flashlight on the screws. They are deeply embedded, some of them rusted. They won’t be easy to unscrew. But his cordless drill will get the job done, sooner or later.

It will make some noise, but nothing too loud, and he’s out here alone.

He just needs to hurry.

Noah puts on his rubber gloves. Then he fits the drill bit into the first screw and gets to work.

98

“Hey there.”

I’m sitting upright, against the wall in a holding cell beneath the substation, on a mattress about as thick and comfortable as a piece of paper, my thoughts scattering about.

My head turns toward the cell bars, toward the voice.

Lauren Ricketts, in uniform, giving me a sympathetic smile.

“Had to wait until the chief went home,” she says. “He didn’t want anyone visiting you. Least of all me.”

I push myself off the wall, pain running down my neck and back.

“What the hell’s going on, Murphy?” she asks. “How can this be right?”

That’s all I’ve been thinking about.

“No clue,” I say. “No freakin’ clue. These girls were murdered in 2007. I wasn’t even here in 2007. I didn’t come here until last year — four years later.”

“But you can’t prove that,” she says.

“How can I prove I never came here?” I throw up my hands. “Like Isaac said, nobody knows when, specifically, those two girls were murdered. June? July? August? There’s no specific day or even month that the murders happened. So how can I produce an alibi? Am I supposed to have an alibi for every single day of the entire summer of 2007? It’s impossible.”

“Oh, Murphy. What a clusterfuck.”

“And this hunting knife they found, the murder weapon? I haven’t so much as touched a hunting knife since I came back here. I’m not sure I’ve ever held one in my life. I mean, it’s not physically possible.”

Ricketts doesn’t have an answer for that. Neither of us does.

“What about Aiden?” I ask. “They’re looking for him?”

“Oh, yeah. His prints on the weapon, the bodies behind his property — and we heard from East Hampton PD about what happened at Justin’s house last night, the attack. There’s a manhunt.”

“We have to find him, Lauren,” I say. “We have to find Aiden.”

“Believe me, we’re trying—”

“No, I mean, we have to find him. Isaac doesn’t want Aiden found. He’s the one who told Aiden to leave. And if he does find Aiden, he’ll kill him. Y’know, make it look like a shootout with a suspect or something. He wants Aiden gone or dead. So Aiden will take the fall all by himself.”

Ricketts looks at me, doubt creeping into her eyes. “Jenna...”

“You think I’m wrong?”

She lifts her shoulders. “I’m not sure. Are you? Are you so sure it’s Isaac? That Isaac’s a killer? That he framed you for this?”

I’m not sure of anything anymore. Aiden, Isaac, Noah — or some combination thereof. My fingerprints magically appearing on murder weapons without my knowledge. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.

“The fingerprint match was clean,” Ricketts says. “I found the murder weapon, that hunting knife, myself. And I delivered it directly to our forensics team. I watched the guy run the analysis, Murph. Isaac didn’t tamper with that. So how could Isaac get your fingerprints on the knife?”

“How could anybody? But somebody did. Probably easier for him than anybody else.”

Ricketts steps back from the cell bars, her focus dropping to the floor.

“You don’t believe me,” I say.

She shakes her head slowly. “I’m not ready to believe our chief of police is a serial killer. No.”

I stare at her. She looks suddenly uncomfortable, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“He got to you,” I say. “He told you what a great job you’re doing. How a big promotion could be in the works. A bright future. ‘But just watch out for Jenna Murphy! Don’t believe anything she says. She’s bad news. She’ll take you down.’ Is that about it, Officer Ricketts?”

“No, that’s not it.” Some steam in her voice, color to her face. “I’m following the facts wherever they lead.”

“Including my prints being found on that hunting knife.”

“Yeah, including that.” Her eyes rise to meet mine.

A gulf between us, suddenly, the cop on the one side, the suspect on the other.

“So we’re done?” I say. “You and me?”

“I told you, Murphy. I’ll follow the facts wherever they lead.”

Another one bites the dust. First Noah, now Ricketts. My “team” has been reduced to a team of me, myself, and I.

“Then I have some facts for you to follow,” I say. “Aiden’s mother. Gloria Willis.”

“Yeah?”

“She was killed in a hit-and-run,” I say. “Find out when.”

She thinks about that, nods. “I can do that.”

“And while you’re at it,” I say, “find out whether Isaac or Noah Walker was adopted.”

99

Joshua Brody, once Noah Walker’s attorney and now mine, walks into my holding cell as Lauren Ricketts leaves. He looks around and then looks at me.

“Thanks for coming in the middle of the night,” I say.

“Part of the job.” He scratches the back of his neck, his eyelids heavy. He looks around again. “So is this the cell where Noah supposedly confessed to Chief James?”

I shake my head. I’m not in the mood. Joshua beat me up pretty good over that during the cross-examination.

“Talk to me,” I say.

“The arrest is solid,” he says. “Your prints on the murder weapon are sufficient for probable cause.”

“We don’t know it’s the murder weapon,” I counter. “They don’t have DNA back yet. We don’t know that it’s Annie’s and Dede’s blood on the knife.”

Brody looks at me like he would look at a child who just doesn’t get it. “The hunting knife was covered in blood and was found with the bodies,” he says. “You’re right. They haven’t conclusively tied the knife to the dead girls, but c’mon. Dead women with stab wounds, a bloody knife found inside...”

“Did they die of stab wounds? I thought their skulls were crushed.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “Autopsy’s tomorrow. But whatever the cause of death, they have sufficient evidence for an arrest. Remember, they don’t have to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt until trial.”

The trial. I can’t believe it. I’m going to be tried for murder?

“You have to get me out of here,” I say.

“Best I can do is try to get a reasonable bond,” Brody says. “The hearing’s tomorrow. But on two counts of murder? It will be hard. If you get bond at all, it will be a million dollars. Maybe two million. Which means you’ll need to come up with ten percent. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, whatever.”

“Noah Walker bonded out. He was charged with a double murder.”

“Noah Walker had a girlfriend for whom a million dollars was pocket change. I don’t suppose you have a trust fund or anything like that?”

I let out a bitter laugh. I have a little bit of money saved up, but nowhere near that kind of scratch.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Brody says. “Unless there’s anything else I can do.”

I drop my head against the wall. But then it comes to me. There is one thing.

“You’re a lawyer,” I say.

“Last I checked, yeah.”

“Maybe you can help me with something,” I say.

100

Joshua Brody rubs his unshaven face, mulling over everything I’ve just told him.

“So you think the sixth and last Holden Dahlquist had a son. A son who’s running around killing people.”

“That’s my theory, yes. A pretty good one, I think.”

“And you think this boy is the younger half brother of Aiden Willis, the other person whose prints were found on the knife.”

“Yes. The half brother was abandoned at birth. But somehow, in some way, he was able to discover his biological father, or vice versa.”

“So you figure there might be some records of this? Maybe the biological mother filed a paternity suit. Or there’d be adoption records. Or both.”

“Something,” I say. “But whatever it may be, I’m pretty sure—”

“It would involve his attorney,” Brody says. “Yes, I agree with that much. If a guy like Holden Dahlquist had a problem like that, his first call would be to his lawyer. Sure.”

“So that’s why I’m asking about his attorney,” I say.

“Okay. Well, to answer your question: These days, most files are stored electronically. But Holden the Sixth, as you call him, he died... when, again?”

“He died sometime in 1994,” I say.

“Okay.” Brody nods. “So any records would be no later than ninety-four. And back then, nobody was creating the kind of electronic files we have today. There would be hard copies.”

Hard copies. That’s what I thought. That’s what I was hoping.

“Where would those hard copies be?”

“Something that old, they would be in off-site storage,” he says. “But it’s not like you have access to them. These are attorney-client documents. You’d need a court order.”

“Then let’s get one.”

“On what grounds? Your hunch?”

“Yes, my hunch.”

He shakes his head. “It would be hard. Nearly impossible.”

“How long would it take?”

“Very long. Months. There’d be a vicious court battle.”

“I don’t have months, Mr. Brody. I have to know this now.”

“Murphy,” he says, “you haven’t even been indicted yet. When you are, there will be a court case, and maybe we can explore that. But now? Right now? No chance. Zero.”

I deflate. He’s making sense, I know it. It would take months to get court-approved access to those files, if they even exist at all.

Unless...

“Just out of curiosity,” I say, “where would the law firm keep its old hard copies of files?”

“Oh.” Brody shrugs. “Most law firms around here use a place out in Riverhead called Dunbar Professional Storage.”

Dunbar Professional Storage in Riverhead.

“I know the name of Holden the Sixth’s lawyer,” I say. “A guy named Finneus Rucker. Do you know him?”

“I knew him,” says Brody. “He died a few years ago. Cancer, I think.”

I deflate. “But I looked up his law firm online. Rucker, Rice and Spong.”

“Yeah, his firm still exists. But he doesn’t.”

“But — his firm would still have the records.”

Brody nods. “I’m sure they do.”

“Well, do you have any idea if his firm uses that storage facility?”

Brody’s eyes narrow. “No, I have no idea. But like I said, wherever they keep those records, you’d have to go through a judge.”

“Absolutely,” I say.

“Don’t get any dumb ideas. You’re in enough trouble already.”

“Of course.”

Dunbar Professional Storage in Riverhead.

Remember that.

That’s my next stop. If I ever get out of this jail cell.

101

Noah removes the third iron bar from the window and decides it’s enough.

He tosses his cable cutters in through the open window.

He stuffs the flashlight into his front pocket.

Using the remaining iron bar as a brace, he hauls himself up and onto the window ledge.

His head through the open window, his body dangling outside, he looks around. It’s dark, but he can see enough to get the drift.

An office. A desk covered in paper, a chair, file cabinets.

He has no choice but to fall in headfirst. He can’t see the floor, but he knows it’s littered with broken glass now.

He lunges forward and catches the chair to break his fall, but fall, and fall hard, he does. An awkward landing, his jeans doing enough to protect him from the glass. Could have been a lot worse.

He brushes himself off and turns on his flashlight just for a second. Then he opens the locked office door, looks beyond it.

Darkness, until he finds the light switch.

And then: a warehouse, a wide and long and high expanse of space, filled with nothing but rows and rows of shelving, a rolling ladder in each row to reach the higher shelves. He looks around long enough to get his bearings. Then he kills the lights. Those overhead lights are no good. Someone could detect an intruder from a mile away.

With his flashlight, he roots around the office and finds the index. He leafs through it until he finds what he’s looking for.

Then he walks into the warehouse, his footsteps echoing, the space pitch-dark except for the beam from his flashlight.

He finds the right row, and then the right shelf. He’s ready to break a lock with the cable cutters, but there aren’t any locks on the doors.

Even better.

He riffles through the files, the flashlight in his mouth. It takes him longer than expected, the risk of detection growing with each moment that passes.

When he finds it, he flips through the pages briefly — time does not permit a thorough review — shining his flashlight over each page, before he closes it up, the story from the newspaper on top:

He takes the news clipping and the other documents, stuffs them back in the file folder, and places the folder under his arm. Then he closes the doors and climbs down the ladder.

He retraces his steps, closing the office door, climbing back out the window, falling into the grass.

He scrambles back to his hiding spot in the shrubs and looks over his handiwork. If he had all the time in the world, he could replace the iron bars. But he doesn’t. And there’s no replacing a shattered window.

But that’s okay. He didn’t leave any prints. He didn’t even have to break any locks. The file doors he opened are now closed up, like before, with no evidence that Noah looked inside that door versus any of the other hundreds of doors in the facility.

So tomorrow, when the employees of Dunbar Professional Storage arrive at work, they’ll know someone broke one of their windows and got inside, but that’s all they’ll know.

They won’t know who broke in. They won’t know where he looked.

And they’ll have no idea which files he took.

102

The courtroom, filled with media and spectators. The discovery of the Yale students, plus the ex-cop who starred prominently in the Noah Walker case — too much for the reporters to stay away. I’ve become tabloid fodder.

Justin, sitting in the front row, trying to give me an upbeat expression when I walk into court. I can’t bear to make eye contact with him.

The lawyers make their arguments. Joshua Brody argues that the evidence against me is weak — the fingerprints on the knife, but that’s all. No motive. No evidence that I even set foot on Long Island during the summer of 2007.

Sebastian Akers rises for the prosecution. Oh, how he must savor the opportunity to prosecute me. He’s never forgiven me for blowing his conviction against Noah Walker.

“Of course she’s a flight risk,” he says. “These women were stabbed, and her prints are on the knife. It’s hard to imagine more direct evidence of guilt, short of capturing the whole thing on video.”

The judge, an old guy I’ve never met named Corrigan, raises his hand.

“Bond will be set at two million dollars,” he says. “In the event bond is made, the defendant will surrender her passport and will submit to electronic monitoring. She will be restricted to home confinement with waivers for work, attorney or medical visits, religious observation, and household errands under the supervision of the sheriff’s office.”

The judge bangs his gavel.

We won, but we lost.

Two million dollars? That means I have to come up with two hundred thousand to get out of here. I don’t think I have ten thousand to my name, and what little I have is going to Joshua Brody as a retainer to defend me.

“I’ll pay it,” Justin calls out to me as the courtroom grows noisy. “It’ll take me a day or two, but I have it.”

“I — can’t ask you to do that,” I say.

He looks at me, almost wounded. “You didn’t ask,” he says.

I don’t know how to respond. I absolutely hate being dependent on someone else for anything. But I don’t have any other options.

Before the deputies escort me from the courtroom, my lawyer asks for a moment.

“We’re lucky to get bond at all,” he says. “Whoever that guy is in the front row, if he’s offering to pay it, you should say yes.”

“But I have to wear an electronic ankle monitor? And home confinement?”

“It’s pretty standard these days,” he says.

I know — but then I can’t do what I need to do. I’ll be trapped.

“And Jenna,” he says. “I called that facility, that off-site storage place I use. Dunbar Professional Storage?”

“Yes?” I perk up.

“I know someone there. I’m a longtime client. Anyway — Holden’s lawyer, Finn Rucker? His firm does use that facility.”

I nod. “Okay, good.”

“But you should know something. Someone broke into their facility last night.”

“What?” I draw back from him.

“Yeah. Broke through a window. Removed the iron bars. Had the run of the place. So just in case you were getting a dumb idea like breaking into that warehouse — which we both know you were thinking — you should know that they’ve doubled down on security. They’re posting guards around the clock now.”

“What — what was taken?” I ask.

“They don’t know. Practically impossible to tell. I think they’re doing an inventory, but it’s so hard to know. There are literally millions of files there.” He looks at me, cocks his head. “Why? You think this is related to your—”

“Of course it’s related,” I whisper harshly. “Whoever broke in there — he did it so I wouldn’t find those files.”

“Jenna.” He squeezes my arm. “You’re watching too many conspiracy shows.”

“He took it so I wouldn’t find it,” I say. Realizing that I probably sound paranoid to him, just another irrational client.

The guards intervene, place me in handcuffs, and escort me out.

I glance back at Brody, who looks like he’s never felt sorrier for anyone.

Then I glance at Justin, who looks like he’s just lost his best friend.

103

Bond was set at two million dollars this morning for Jenna Murphy, the former Southampton police detective arrested for the murders of Dede Paris and Annie Church, the Yale sophomores whose disappearance in the Hamptons five years ago sparked a massive manhunt...

Noah Walker paces back and forth in his living room as the newscast — News at Noon — talks about Murphy and the murders of the Yale sophomores.

Noah is exhausted, not having slept last night, after breaking into the storage facility and removing those files. He needs to sleep, he needs to shower — but he can’t do anything but think about his next move.

He passes the couch, the pile of documents he took from the warehouse.

The news clipping with the catchy headline, NEWBORN ABANDONED AT POLICE STATION, which tells most of the story right there.

And the letter, aged and dusty, having sat in a file inside that storage facility for the better part of twenty years now. The nice stationery, the fancy letterhead bearing the name of the private investigator hired by Holden VI, with tabs behind the letter, supporting documentation:

Noah looks away from the documents, thinks of the things Jenna Murphy has said to him over the last few weeks.

At the cemetery, when she told him her theory for the first time: Holden the Sixth left behind a son, she said. A son who wants to restart the family tradition.

And yesterday, in the parking lot at Tasty’s: Were you adopted, Noah?

Holden left behind a son. Were you adopted, Noah?

He looks back down at the letter:

He reads through the packet of information behind the letter — the hospital records, the county adoption records, the photographs.

Noah goes upstairs to his bedroom loft, finds the handgun he hasn’t held in years. Checks it for ammunition. Stuffs it in his pants. Puts on a clean shirt, pulls it down over the gun.

He grabs his leather jacket on the way out and hops on his Harley.

Her apartment isn’t far. And she’s definitely not home. She’s in jail, stuck on a two-million-dollar bond.

He parks his Harley outside her apartment and approaches it. It’s broad daylight, and cars occasionally whisk by on Main Street. But no pedestrians approach.

His heartbeat speeds up. Should he do it?

Yes.

He slams against the door, four times, five times, violent thrusts, wood splintering, sharp pain in his shoulder, until enough of the door frame has been compromised that he can reach inside and unlock the dead bolt and open the knob from the inside.

He pushes open the battered door and he’s inside Jenna Murphy’s apartment.

A mess. A train wreck.

A timeline, on her wall, covering all of the murders. Right. He’s seen that before.

But there’s something he hasn’t seen before. On her desk, beneath the timeline. A newspaper clipping, jagged edges, still with tape attached to all four corners, as if she removed it from something:

Noah’s heart skips a beat.

She knows, he thinks. She already knows.

Knowing what he has to do now. Wishing it hadn’t come to this.

He was really starting to like Jenna Murphy.

104

Another day in this cramped, drafty jail cell. A special kind of torture for me, listening to the hustle and bustle one floor above me, hearing the police department at work, reminding me of how far I’ve fallen in such a short time.

Isaac wanted it that way. He normally would transfer me to the Suffolk County Jail after my bond hearing, where I’d be placed in administrative segregation because I’m a former cop, who can’t be put in with ordinary inmates. But the jail is overcrowded, which gave Isaac the excuse to keep me here, so close and yet so far from the job I once had, the job I loved.

Footsteps. Somebody approaching my cell. It’s not lunch. I ate a half hour ago. Tea and crumpets, maybe? A complimentary massage?

No, and no.

It’s Isaac, staring at me, looking... not so happy. I mean, he’s not Mr. Sunshine on a good day, but... why shouldn’t he be happy? He should be dancing a jig, the way things are going.

He produces a key from behind his back and opens the door. He walks in and sizes me up. I try to put on a brave front, to look like I’m holding up much better than I really am. But I can’t hide the dark circles under my eyes, and I haven’t showered in two days; my hair is flat and oily. My clothes look exactly as they should — like I’ve slept in them for two nights.

He doesn’t just look unhappy. He looks like he just swallowed a bug.

Why the long face, Isaac?

“You have the right to remain silent,” he says to me. And then he runs through the rest of the Miranda warnings. I could say them backward by now.

“Why are you Mirandizing me?” I ask.

“I want you to acknowledge I’ve made you aware of your rights,” he says.

“Fine. Done.”

But fresh Miranda warnings? Only one reason for that.

He wants to question me on a new topic.

“What happened in 1994?” he asks.

I draw back. Why is he asking me about 1994? When I was just a kid. The year that thing happened, when I disappeared, only to be found on the beach by 7 Ocean Drive. The day my parents whisked me away from the Hamptons, never to return during my childhood.

Seven hours of hell, Aunt Chloe called it.

“There was a missing-persons report that summer,” he says. “It lasted less than a day. I saw it myself. July—”

“I have nothing to say to you, Isaac. Zilch.”

Isaac steps back. He can’t be surprised that I’d clam up. His face turns tomato red.

“I just want you to know,” he says, “that I know you’re behind this. I don’t know what kind of crap you’re pulling here, but I’m going to figure it out. You may have won this battle, but you won’t win the war.”

What the hell is he talking about? What battle did I win? As far as I can tell, right now I’m getting the royal crap beaten out of me.

He opens his hand. “You’re free to leave,” he says.

Oh. Justin came through with the money that quickly? Quicker than he thought he could.

But this doesn’t seem right. Isaac doesn’t have any handcuffs.

There’s a protocol when you bond out. You’re transported to the sheriff, who makes arrangements for your home confinement, gets a list of addresses for doctors and lawyers and grocery stores so they can input the coordinates into the GPS. Then someone fits the ankle bracelet on you.

But until then, you’re still locked up. You’re handcuffed and transported.

“I said you’re free to leave,” he says. “You’re being released.”

“I don’t understand.”

Isaac shoots me a look. He thinks I do understand. He thinks I’ve pulled some kind of fast one, that I’m just playing dumb.

“You’re no longer under arrest for the murders of Dede Paris and Annie Church,” he says.

My head spins, some strange version of hope floating through me.

“The DNA came back on the murder weapon,” he says. “None of the blood on the knife matches those girls. Their stab wounds don’t match up with the knife blade, either. That knife wasn’t used to kill Dede and Annie.”

I stand up for the first time, unsteady, certain I’m not hearing this correctly. A bloody knife, with both Aiden’s and my fingerprints on it, but...

“We did get matches on the blood, though,” says Isaac. “Not Dede or Annie, but two matches. One of the matches was you, Murphy.”

Like the floor has dropped out from beneath me, like I’m spinning, falling...

“My... blood?”

My blood on the knife? My prints and my blood?

“And... who else’s blood?” I manage. “You said... two matches.”

“You know,” says Isaac, fuming. “You damn well know. Tell me, Murphy. Tell me everything.”

But I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on.

“That knife wasn’t used to kill Annie and Dede,” says Isaac. “It was the knife used to kill Holden Dahlquist the Sixth, on July 13, 1994. The same day that you went missing for seven hours.”

105

I stumble out of the police station with a bag holding my cell phone, wallet, keys.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know where to go.

I look at my hand, at the inch-long scar across my palm. The only injury they found on me, Aunt Chloe said, after I went missing for seven hours and then was found on the beach, otherwise unharmed.

That scar must have come from the knife. The knife that had my fingerprints on it. It cut my hand. I must have touched it, too.

My prints, my blood.

On the knife that Holden VI used to kill himself.

On July 13, 1994.

I was there. I was there when it happened.

What the hell happened that day?

Aiden, I think. I need to find Aiden.

But how? And whom can I trust at this point? Not Noah. Not Ricketts, not anymore.

Only one person I can think of.

I make the call, and not fifteen minutes later, Justin’s Jaguar pulls up in front of the substation.

He pops out. “What happened? How did you get out?”

I shake my head. It’s a long story. A story I don’t even understand.

“Justin,” I say, “I need someone I can trust. That’s a rapidly dwindling population, I’m afraid.”

Justin nods, a look of concern on his face.

“Can I trust you?” I ask.

“Only one way to find out.” He smiles, then realizes the comment fell flat. He touches my arm. “Hey, listen. You know how I feel about you. I haven’t made a secret of that. And I know... I know you don’t feel quite the same way about me. I know I’m not your type.”

“No, it’s not—”

“I’m not dumb, Jenna. And I’m not blind, either. But I’m here for you if you need me. Maybe — maybe I’ll grow on you. Maybe not. But either way, if you need something, you know all you have to do is ask.”

I hate this. I hate having to rely on someone else. Especially for this.

“Aiden already tried to kill me once,” I say. “He’d do it again. And someone’s working with him. There are people in this town who don’t want me to figure this out, and they’ll kill to stop me.”

Justin takes a deep breath, then nods.

“I’m in,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

106

Justin drives his Jaguar toward his house, having just gotten an earful from me.

“Okay,” he says, glancing at me. “So something happened to you here in July of 1994, and you think Aiden had something to do with it.”

“Yes. And someone else did, too.”

“Okay,” he says. “And you think this ‘someone else’ is Aiden’s younger half brother.”

“Yes. And his father is Holden Dahlquist the Sixth.”

Justin takes a deep breath. “You think Holden the Sixth, and his newfound son, and Aiden, tried to kill you when you were a little girl.”

“Something like that,” I say. “I don’t have it all figured out. Maybe — maybe I was their first. Maybe I was a dry run, a test, to see if they could pull it off. Whatever it was, something must have gone wrong, because Holden ended up dead, not me.”

“Wow. And now the son is carrying on the legacy.”

“I think so,” I say. “So the key is, who is Holden’s son? Who is the baby abandoned at the police station? Isaac? Noah?”

Justin shrugs. “Can you ask them?”

“They wouldn’t admit it. I asked Noah if he was adopted and he said no. But that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t know,” says Justin. “Maybe his parents never told him.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, seriously, Jenna — how do any of us know that our parents are our biological parents? We take our parents’ word for it, right?”

“There are birth certificates,” I say.

“Those are just records. They can be doctored.”

“Or there’s a strong physical resemblance.”

Justin makes a face. “Maybe. But not always. I’m not adopted, but I don’t look a whole lot like either of my parents. I’m kind of a blend of them. Do you look like your parents?”

I think about that. “Actually, I got my looks and red hair from my Irish great-grandmother.” I turn to Justin. “Okay, point taken. So you think there might be someone running around with Holden the Sixth’s genes, and he doesn’t even know it?”

“Possibly. Do you think there’s some kind of serial-killer gene that can be passed down from generation to generation? Even without your knowledge?”

That one is definitely above my pay grade.

“We have to find Aiden,” I say. “Aiden’s the key to all of this.”

“Okay, so how do we do that?”

“I have no idea.”

Justin touches my arm. “Don’t say that. Think.”

Think. He’s right, think.

“If I’m Aiden,” I say, “I don’t have much money. I don’t have a car. I can’t go to airports or train or bus stations. I can’t use a credit card for a rental car or a hotel. How do I run? I could hitchhike.”

“Have you gotten a good look at Aiden?” Justin asks. “Would you pick him up?”

“Stranger things have happened. But okay. What else? He could boost a car, I suppose. But I don’t have access to that kind of information right now, recent auto thefts or anything else. I don’t have any resources at all.”

“I’ll try not to take that as an insult,” says Justin.

“You know what I mean.”

If I’m Aiden, what do I do? If I’m Aiden...

If I’m Aiden...

Wait.

“Maybe he didn’t run at all,” I say. I turn to Justin. “Maybe he’s right here in town. He’s lived here his whole life, right? If he could find a place to hide for a while, it would beat the hell out of traveling somewhere with no money, no resources.”

Justin shakes his head.

I slap my hand on the dashboard. Could it be that simple?

“I can’t believe this,” I say, “but I think I might know where he is.”

107

Noah jumps onto his motorcycle, his heartbeat racing faster than the bike’s engine as he heads across town.

He parks his Harley and removes the gun from his pants, placing it inside the saddlebag on his bike. Cops don’t like it when you walk into a police station with a handgun.

Noah enters the police substation. Someone at the front desk, behind a plate of bulletproof glass.

“I’m here to see one of the people in the holding cell,” he says.

“Are you a lawyer?” the man asks, though he doesn’t seem to think Noah fits that bill.

“No, but this is important,” he says. “Jenna Murphy is—”

“Jenna Murphy isn’t here,” the man says.

“Oh — where are you holding her?”

“We’re not. She was released half an hour ago.”

“She was released? On bond?”

The officer on duty looks over his glasses at Noah. “Sir, whoever you are, I can’t give that information to you.”

He looks outside. She was released half an hour ago? But... he saw her car at her house just now. How did she leave? She wouldn’t have walked—

Justin, he thinks. She must be with Justin.

“I need to speak with Isaac,” he says. “I need to speak with the chief.”

“Sir,” says the duty officer, “you can’t just waltz in here and demand to speak with the chief.”

“It’s important.”

“Sir, the chief isn’t—”

“Listen!” Noah slaps his hand against the plate of glass. “I need to speak with him and I need to speak with him now!”

“Hey.”

Noah turns at the sound of the voice. A uniformed officer approaching him, a young woman — Murphy’s friend, the rookie cop, Lauren Ricketts.

“What’s going on, Noah?” she says.

“I have to talk to Isaac,” he says. “Right now.”

“Why? Tell me what’s going on.”

Noah thinks it over. He doesn’t know Ricketts. He has no idea what she knows and what she doesn’t know.

“No,” he says. “I’ll only talk to Isaac.”

108

Justin pulls his car into his garage in East Hampton. The garage door grinds to a close behind us.

“So tell me,” he says. “Tell me where you think Aiden is.”

“Later,” I say.

“Later? Why later?”

My cell phone buzzes. Caller ID says it’s Lauren Ricketts. I don’t dare answer. I let the call go to voice mail and then play the message on my speakerphone:

I look over at Justin, whose face has gone pale.

He mobilized the SWAT teams, Murphy. We’re coming after you with everything we have. You should surrender at the station before something bad happens. I can coordinate it with you. Please, call me before this gets out of hand.

Justin turns and looks at me, the gravity of what we’ve just heard sinking in. “He just released you, and now he’s after you again?”

After talking to Noah, apparently. And here I thought Noah didn’t get along so well with the chief.

I get out of the car, and Justin follows suit. We go into his house, his beautiful, spacious kitchen.

“You said you have a gun,” I say.

“Um — yeah, I do,” he says, still distracted. “Hang on.”

“And a flashlight,” I call out to him as he leaves the kitchen.

I take a breath. Isaac and Noah got together, had a nice little chat, and now the STPD is after me with full force.

Isaac and Noah. They’ve made a very public show of not getting along so well. An act? An act I fell for hook, line, and sinker?

“Okay.” Justin returns to the kitchen with not one gun but two, holding each of them with two fingers, the barrels dangling down.

“A regular arsenal,” I say.

But not really. One is a shiny, polished revolver, new and, from the looks of it, unused. The other is a beat-up revolver with a pearl handle, a vintage piece, a .38 special with a very short, maybe two-inch barrel that is probably thirty or forty years old.

“Take your pick,” he says, placing them gently on the kitchen table.

I laugh. “Take my pick? How old is that thirty-eight special?”

Justin shrugs. “My dad bought it years ago — probably the seventies. This new one, I bought. I assume it works.”

“You assume?”

He shakes his head. “Never used it. Bought it for home protection. Some silly notion that I’m safer with it. I have a feeling if I ever had to use it, I’d end up shooting myself in the foot or something.”

“You’re probably right.” I choose the shiny new revolver, hold the gun toward the floor, pop open the cylinder, and confirm the presence of rounds in all six chambers.

Justin looks at all of this like he’s scared to death of guns.

He probably is. This isn’t his thing. He isn’t cut out for this. He’s a nice guy, a wonderful guy, but he lives in a world where people are decent and gracious. He doesn’t live in a world full of bad guys. That’s where we differ. That’s where we’ll always differ.

“And the flashlight,” I say.

“Oh — right,” he says. He removes one from a kitchen drawer and hands it to me.

Then he claps his hands, as if ready for action, but the paleness of his face suggests otherwise. “Where to?” he asks. “Where do you think Aiden is hiding out?”

I stuff the revolver in the back of my pants. “I have to go now,” I say.

He looks at me. “Don’t you mean we have to go?”

“No, I mean I have to go. This is my problem, not yours.”

“Jenna—”

“You’ve done enough. You’ve given me your gun and a flashlight, and a ride. But I can’t ask for anything else.”

“For the last time, you didn’t ask,” he says. He puts his hands on my shoulders. “You can’t do this by yourself. I may not be a veteran police officer or some Navy SEAL — shit, I wasn’t even an athlete — but you can trust me. I’d do anything for you, Detective Murphy. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

I look into his eyes. Yes, there’s something there, something more than gratitude for all his attempts to help me. Maybe what I feel for him is enough. Maybe. But now is not the time to be gauging my emotions.

I have to do this, and I have to do it alone.

“I’ll just follow you,” he says.

“Not if I shoot you in the leg.”

He laughs, in spite of the circumstances.

Then the doorbell rings. We both turn our heads toward the front door. Justin takes a couple of cautious steps backward and peeks beyond the kitchen, presumably through a window.

“Police car,” he says.

“East Hampton PD?”

“Southampton,” he says. “That’s Isaac Marks at my front door.”

109

“Shit,” I say, panic swirling inside me. “Shit.”

Justin puts out a hand for caution. “I’ll take care of it. Stay here.”

“I should hide.”

“No place to hide. He’d see you running through the kitchen. Sit tight.”

Justin walks out of the kitchen. A moment later, I hear him opening the front door. I steel myself, close my eyes, listen carefully.

“Isaac,” he says.

My blood goes cold.

“Hello, Justin. I’m looking for Jenna Murphy. Is she here?”

“Here? No. No, she’s not here. Why?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No idea,” says Justin. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s a police matter. When did you last see her?”

“I dropped her off at her house earlier today. After she was released from custody.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s it. I dropped her off and I drove here.”

“You drove here? Why not to the restaurant?”

A pause. “I’m the boss, Isaac. I come and go as I please. I didn’t think I had to get the police department’s permission.”

“You come and go as you please.” A pause, this time from Isaac. “You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you, Justin? Because you know it’s a crime to lie to a law enforcement officer, don’t you?”

“I think I’ve heard that somewhere,” Justin says. “Oh, I know — it was on TV.”

I smile but don’t dare laugh.

“You think this is funny? Listen to me, and listen to me very closely. We are actively seeking to bring Jenna Murphy into custody. She’s not who you think she is.”

“I think she’s an honorable and decent person.”

“Well, she isn’t. I’m gonna take her down. The easy way or the hard way, I’m gonna do it. I prefer the easy way. The safe way. But if you’re helping her evade us, you become an accessory. You ever heard that term from TV? It means you’re just as guilty as she is.”

Justin doesn’t respond.

“I’ve known you a long time, Justin. Never had a beef with you. You’ve always been a good egg. And you make the best damn barbecue shrimp on Long Island. So I’m going to give you one more chance. And think about what I said. You can help us find a dangerous person who’s committed some very serious crimes. Or you could lie to me and spend a very long time in prison. And I will personally see to it that you do.”

My heart is sinking as Justin himself sinks deeper and deeper into my problems.

“I understand.” Justin’s tone is cold and flat.

“Do you know where Jenna Murphy is?”

I hold my breath. I’d come out right now and show myself, and spare Justin any further trouble. But if I do, it’s game over. I’ll never know the truth.

“I have no idea where she is,” Justin tells Isaac.

Justin returns to the kitchen, his face ashen, after Isaac drives away.

“Well, that was fun,” he says, trying to maintain a brave front, but he can’t even bring himself to smile.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m going to leave now.”

“I’m going with you.”

“No. I leave now, you have plausible deniability. I’ll scrape the serial number off your gun so it can’t be traced back to you. No one will ever know you helped me. But if you go with me, you spend the next decade in prison. Assuming you don’t get killed.”

“I don’t care.” He touches my arm. “I understand the risks. But you need help, and the risk of losing you is worse than...” He swallows hard. His eyes fill. “I don’t usually — I’ve never responded to anyone like I do to you.”

I step away from him. “Justin, you know I can’t reciprocate those feelings. I just don’t know—”

“Yeah, I know. But I don’t care. You just haven’t figured out what a wonderful guy I am yet. You will, someday.”

I drop my eyes and smile. Still trying to make this easier for me. Maybe he’s right. Maybe someday I’ll feel about him the same way he does about me. If there is a someday in my future.

“At least tell me where you’re going,” he says.

“No, Justin.”

“Then take my car.”

“No. They find your car and that’s the same thing as you coming with me. You’re aiding and abetting. I’ll walk. Better I stay off the roads, anyway. And I’m in no hurry. I need the sun to go down before I make my move. I’ll wait until midnight, probably.”

“Call me on your cell, then. At least tell me you’re okay.”

“Turning my cell phone off right now,” I say. “So they can’t track me.”

Justin lets out air, shaking his head. “Oh, Jenna. Don’t say good-bye to me. Just — tell me this isn’t good-bye.”

I walk up to him and plant a soft kiss on his cheek. “This isn’t good-bye,” I say, before I head out his back door.

110

My thoughts zigzagging in every direction, trying to make sense of it all — Noah, Isaac, Aiden — not to mention the entire Southampton Town Police Department after me, heavily armed and prepared for combat. But something is telling me that the key to this is Aiden Willis. If I can get hold of him tonight, if I can surprise him and subdue him, I can finally put an end to this.

The walk from East Hampton isn’t bad. It’s about seven miles, which under different circumstances would be a typical day’s jog for me, and it’s safer than driving. When you’re on foot, you’re nimble. You can escape into crowds, cut corners, hide among foliage — you can obscure yourself in any number of ways.

The sky overhead is threatening rain, which will royally suck if it happens, but the good news is that in the meantime, it darkens the sky and brings the rough equivalent of nightfall prematurely.

I make it to the beach and kick off my shoes and tromp along the sand, the restless Atlantic Ocean to the south, the carefree breeze playing with my hair. I don’t look like a fugitive, and unless the police are conducting beach patrol, I’m practically invisible to them.

So I sit in the sand, less than a mile from my destination, watching the foamy tide crash ashore and recede, waiting for the moment to arrive. If my guess about Aiden is right, he’s settling in right now, nestled in his hiding spot, his guard slowly lowering.

Somewhere in the house at 7 Ocean Drive.

At midnight, I make the decision — it’s time. Hopefully, he’s asleep, or at least close to it. Not expecting company, in any event.

I step out of the sand onto the parking lot and look up at the mansion. No lights are on. No visible sign of life. Not that I expected Aiden to be hosting a party.

I walk along Ocean Drive until I reach the front of the house, my nervous system catching up now, sending warning signals to me, filling my chest. Justin’s revolver in my right hand, the flashlight in my left.

I try the driveway entrance, expecting resistance, planning to push it open and squeeze myself between the twin gates. But it’s not locked. I push one side open and enter, then close it back up, without allowing my imagination to wonder why the gate would be open.

My breathing erratic, my legs heavy, I walk up the driveway to the fork — to the right, the walk heading up the hill to the house; to the left, the driveway continuing on to the carriage house or whatever it is.

For some reason, I don’t take the familiar path, the one I’ve traveled several times during my investigation, up the sidewalk toward the house.

This time, I stay left, remaining on the driveway, walking toward that oversize carriage house.

Not knowing why. Unable to place it in my brain, but feeling something inside me growing, spreading like poison.

And then a flash through my brain like lightning.

Walking, shoved from behind, forced forward, wondering what it is, a stable, a garage, a separate house, where is it he’s taking me?

Walk. Move! Walk faster, you stupid girl!

I suck in a breath. I should turn around now. I know that. If I had any sense, I’d turn and run. Instead, I shine my light forward, just briefly, to see if there’s anything in front of me, up the driveway toward the structure.

I move slowly—

Faster! Walk faster!

— as I approach it. Tall double doors for an entrance. On the ground, at my feet, a long chain with a broken lock.

Somebody unlocked this door recently.

He’s here. Aiden is here.

I put my flashlight in my mouth and raise my gun. With my free hand, I pull on the door handle and yank it open.

In one motion, I drop to a knee, remove the flashlight from my mouth, and click it on, sweeping it over the space inside.

Open air. Two stories tall. Big, yes, but empty.

Empty.

Stains on the concrete floor from automobiles, once upon a time. A rack on the wall for tools, though none are present right now. A carpenter’s desk, too, a wooden top with steel legs, with an old saw and a vise on top.

Empty. But a different kind of empty.

I shine my light along the floor by the desk. There are circles on the floor, dust markings, from where the legs of the tool desk rested not long ago.

“Someone moved that desk,” I mumble to myself. Recently. Very recently.

Why move it?

I shine the light along the floor.

In the area where the desk once stood, before being moved, there is a break in the concrete. An outline. A square. Lying on top of it, a short length of rope.

I squat down for a closer look. Same color paint, but the surface of the square looks different.

I try to pick up the rope, but it’s stuck to the floor, attached somehow.

And the surface is... wood, not concrete.

A wooden square with a rope attached to it.

I grab the rope and, this time, pull on it hard.

The wooden square jars loose.

“What the hell...”

I pull harder, and the piece of wood pops upward.

A burst of cool air escaping from beneath it.

“A hidden door,” I whisper.

There’s something underneath this floor.

111

My gun poised, I pull the trapdoor fully open. I turn on the flashlight, dust particles floating in the beam, aiming it down into the darkness below.

A ladder, a wooden ladder, leading down several steps to a floor.

My lungs thirsting for air, my head spinning. A small tremor spreads through my limbs, immediately turning into a full-scale tremble, my hand shaking so hard I can hardly hold my gun. I don’t dare cock the revolver’s hammer, putting the gun in ready position, for fear I’ll start shooting, maybe even hitting myself.

The ladder so wobbly

I don’t know how far down it will go

The boy yelling at me, “Move! Move!”

I drop to my knees and suck in air, desperately seeking breath while my lungs seize up.

I was here. I was in this carriage house. I went down this ladder.

Sweat stinging my eyes, my shirt stuck to my back, my vision spotty, my heart pounding so fiercely I can hardly move.

“Move, Murphy,” I whisper. “Move.”

I tuck the gun into the back of my pants. I fish around the open space with one leg until my foot finds a rung on the ladder.

I move slowly, hoping to minimize the noise, praying I don’t lose my grip, the ladder itself quaking along with my hands, my arms and legs.

Darker, the lower I climb.

Colder.

White noise filling my ears, bits and pieces of memories, the sounds of the boy’s voice taunting me—

Move! Keep moving, stupid girl

— my body shivering so violently, my feet hitting the floor, something hard like marble. I remove my gun and aim it in all directions, spinning, somehow keeping my balance, as I shine the flashlight all around.

A tunnel. I’m at one end. The other end, I can’t see. High ceilings, width sufficient for two, maybe three people to stand side-by-side.

The lightning bolts between my eyes, the fragments coming back.

Wearing sandals and the bathing suit Mommy just bought me, a Lion King T-shirt over it. So hard to walk in these sandals, especially when the boy pushes me, afraid that if I fall he’ll get mad, afraid of what he might do to me—

Stepping forward gingerly, every forward advance an effort, half blind from the sweat burning my eyes, electricity filling my body—

I don’t understand what is happening, why this boy is making me go down here, where are we going, where are we going—

The beam of my flashlight dancing along the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and then I see it.

A wall. The end of the tunnel.

A doorknob.

I tuck the flashlight under my left arm, my left hand holding a wobbly gun. With my right, I reach for the knob.

I steel myself. “You can do this,” I tell myself.

I turn the knob slowly, then whip the door open.

112

I point the gun inside the room, my pulse pounding against my temples.

The smell of bleach and burning oil. A square, windowless room, a single kerosene lamp on one side casting flickering orange light about. Next to the lamp, a sleeping bag, unfolded, but nobody inside it. Nobody in this room, period. No chairs or furniture or anything except — except something near the back—

A spear. Protruding from the floor, a long narrow missile with a sharp top—

“No,” I say. “No.” Hot tears blurring my vision, running down my cheeks into my mouth.

I step into the room, my words echoing between my ears, the walls moving, the room spinning, the cries, the horrific, ghoulish screams from all directions filling my head, my legs unsteady as I move forward—

— as I move toward the other end of this square room—

— because somehow I know, some internal compass is directing me, some force is moving me toward a door at the other end of the room, a door I can’t see but that I know, somehow I know is there.

Everything slowing down, like I’m moving through quicksand, but I must reach the door, I have to reach it for some reason, but my legs are suddenly numb, up is down, down is up, the floor is suddenly rising up to meet my face with a violent smack, sending shock waves through my skull, jarring the roots of my teeth.

The revolver bounces out of my hand on impact with the floor.

Everything fuzz and fog, but I can’t let go now, can’t let go now.

The flashlight underneath me — I fell on it — but the gun...

I need the gun.

My head lifting off the floor, searing pain over my right eye, nausea rising to the surface; I’m woozy and disoriented. Patting the floor around me. Forcing myself to my knees, light flickering in and out from the glow of the kerosene lamp, the gash over my eye making me pay a severe price every time I whip my head from one side to the other, but I need the gun—

Words screaming at me, but I can’t make them out, so loud that I can’t hear them, echoing through my head with such force that I can’t understand them, what is he saying, what is he—

Come with me

Footsteps, coming from the other side of the room, near the door I can’t see, footsteps, someone’s coming—

Come with me

Come with me

The gun, I need the gun—

Where is that gun?

The click of a doorknob, the groan of a door opening.

And Aiden Willis walks in.

113

Aiden, the scarecrow hair sticking out from his baseball cap turned backward, his features lit up with the flickering orange light, holding something in his hand, a thermos, closing the door behind him.

I hold my breath, hold my body still, searching for the gun only with my eyes.

There. I spot it. Justin’s revolver, over by the wall.

“Oh—” Aiden jumps upon seeing me on the floor to his left. The thermos falls from his hand, clanging and bouncing on the ground. He falls against the wall and struggles to keep his balance.

I slide my body toward the far wall and grab the revolver, cock the hammer.

“What — how — what do you—”

I grip the gun with both hands, trembling so fiercely that I couldn’t possibly aim properly.

My insides on fire, my head ringing, nausea and bile at my throat, oxygen coming in tiny, thirsty gulps—

The door opens

Bright light streaming in, and a boy, a boy with scarecrow hair

With some reserve energy I didn’t know existed, as if I’m watching someone else perform the task, I rise to my knees and aim the gun toward Aiden.

Aiden’s eyes go wide; he looks ghoulish in the intermittent orange light, pinned against the wall, watching me.

Lightning, thunder between my ears.

Come with me

Come with me

The gun so unsteady in my hand, rising and falling, swaying back and forth.

Aiden watching me, watching the gun bob up and down, back and forth.

Tears filling my eyes again, my chest heaving, my throat so full I can’t speak—

Come with me

Sobbing and shaking, the gun moving all over the place—

Aiden watching me, watching the gun.

Come with me

The gun dropping to my side. I can’t do it. I know it and Aiden knows it.

Aiden pushes himself off the wall, straightens himself.

Looks at me, just for a single moment, those darting eyes making contact with mine.

Come with me

Then he walks toward me. No sudden movement, just slowly approaching me.

Come with me

The boy with the scarecrow hair

Aiden places a hand over my gun hand, then carefully removes the revolver from it.

I look up at him, on my knees, helpless.

He uncocks the revolver, points it upward, pops open the cylinder, and empties all six rounds from the chamber into his cupped hand. He locks the cylinder back in place and hands the unloaded gun back to me.

“Aiden, wait,” I manage, my throat full, my words garbled.

Then Aiden Willis disappears through the door from which he entered.

“Please, wait,” I say as I get to my feet, the synapses not firing properly, but I manage to stumble and stagger toward the door.

114

Noah Walker sits on his idling Harley, down the street from Justin’s house in East Hampton. He’s logged a lot of miles tonight looking for Jenna Murphy, driving loops around Bridgehampton, hitting some familiar spots like Murphy’s apartment, Tasty’s, the Dive Bar, even Aiden’s house, but always doubling back here to Justin’s place.

Because Justin’s the best bet for finding her. Jenna was last seen, according to Isaac, being picked up outside the police station by someone driving a Jaguar, which almost assuredly means Justin. And it would make sense she’d call him.

They aren’t together right now, apparently, because all Justin has done for the last couple of hours is pace back and forth in his living room.

There he is right now, standing close enough to the window on the west side of his property that Noah can see him. Checking his watch. Pacing. Running his hands through his hair. Nervous. Anxious.

Maybe it’s time to drive around some more, do another loop.

He jumps at the sight of Justin’s garage door lifting. A moment later, the Jaguar pulls out of the driveway, backing up not far from where Noah rests on his Harley.

This is it. He’s sure of it.

He waits until Justin has turned off his street before he starts up his bike and drives. He turns in the same direction as Justin and follows him from a distance, only a small amount of traffic on the roads but sufficient to hide his presence.

Justin travels west on Main Street toward Bridgehampton. Noah keeps his distance, considers even killing his lights, but he sees no indication that Justin knows he’s being followed.

If only he knew where Justin was going. If he knew that, he could—

Justin’s car slows near the cemetery. He puts on his signal for a right turn.

Wait.

Wait a second.

He’s heading for Ocean Drive. Sure. Of course. He’s going to that house.

And I know a shortcut. I can beat him there.

Noah veers off Main Street and drives his bike across the open field of the cemetery, taking a straight line instead of the right angle Justin is forced to take by driving on the streets.

Noah crosses through the south end of the cemetery and hits Ocean Drive before Justin has even turned off Main Street. With a good two blocks’ lead on Justin, he kills the lights on his bike and guns it forward, making sure he’ll arrive at the mansion at least a full minute before Justin.

He stops at a group of trees just off the street, very close to the mansion. He looks back, seeing the headlights of a car in the distance, heading his way.

He removes his gun and flashlight from his saddlebag. Then he ducks into the shrubbery across the street from the mansion and waits. Only moments later, the Jaguar pulls up in front of the mansion.

Justin gets out of his car without any sense that Noah is nearby, or that he’s been followed, jogging up to the mammoth gate blocking the driveway. He grabs it, then pushes it open and heads onto the driveway.

Noah creeps closer, obscured by darkness, in soft grass, watching Justin.

Justin jogs slowly up toward the dark house, looking at it. Looking, as well, at the old carriage house at the end of the driveway.

Noah crosses the street and hides behind the Jaguar.

Justin, at a crossroads, decides to head up the driveway, toward the carriage house. Noah slinks up to the gate by the curb and pushes it open as softly as he can.

A flashlight comes on, Justin illuminating the space in front of him.

Noah sees what Justin saw, the reason he chose to head up the driveway.

The door of the carriage house is wide open.

Justin starts jogging toward it, while Noah follows, moving at a slightly faster clip, closing the distance but taking care not to announce himself.

“Jenna!” Justin calls out in a harsh whisper. “Jenna?” He approaches the carriage house with caution, slowing his pace.

Then Justin disappears inside.

Noah reaches the doors and readies himself.

115

Noah peeks inside the carriage house.

Justin is shining his flashlight around. “Shit,” he says.

You don’t know what shit is, Justin.

But you’re about to find out.

Noah springs forward into the room. Before Justin can do anything more than turn around, Noah plows into him, sending him sprawling, crashing into the wall. Noah grabs Justin and throws him facedown on the cement floor, gripping his hair, shoving the gun into the back of Justin’s neck.

“Where is she?” Noah growls.

“Noah?” Justin manages, catching his breath. “Is that... you?”

“Tell me where she is, Justin, or I’ll kill you right now.”

His fingers tightly gripping Justin’s hair, Noah jerks Justin’s head upward and then down, hard, onto the cement floor.

“That’s me being nice, Justin. You wanna see me when I’m mean? This is your last chance,” says Noah. “Where is Jenna Murphy?”

“I don’t — I’m looking for her, too. I thought she might’ve... come here.”

Cool air to Noah’s right. He looks over, shines his flashlight over the trapdoor, wide open.

“Did she go down there?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not bullshitting you.” Justin’s voice weaker from the blow to his head. “What... what are you going to do to her?”

Noah presses the gun into the soft space beneath Justin’s skull. “You should be worried about what I’m going to do to you.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Justin says. “Please, Noah, just... don’t hurt her.”

Noah leans down, close to Justin’s face. “Justin, I can’t tell if you’re a liar or a fool.”

He cracks Justin’s head against the floor again. Justin goes limp with an abrupt groan.

Noah stands and shines his flashlight along the walls, over the carpenter’s desk. Some things hanging on the walls that could be helpful.

Then he shines the light back down on Justin, unconscious but still breathing.

He pats Justin down and feels something in the front pocket of his trousers. He removes a tiny gun, one of those old Saturday-night specials, a beat-up vintage .38 with a pearl handle.

“I think I’ll take this, Justin,” he says. He stuffs the little gun into his pants pocket, a nice complement to his own gun.

“I haven’t decided what I’m gonna do to you yet,” he says. “Let’s see how I feel after my nice, friendly chat with Jenna Murphy.”

116

I stumble through the door, the door through which Aiden Willis just escaped, away from the smooth marble onto something different, the floor broken and dirty. Once I’m clear of the doorway, I slam the door behind me.

And take a deep, delicious breath of oxygen.

The air is dry and stale, but I don’t care. I’m breathing again, on two feet again. I’m out of that awful room.

Come with me

I put one foot in front of the other, my legs unsteady but better, feeling better now.

“Aiden,” I try to call out, my throat and mouth so dry I can hardly speak.

A small room, it feels like, not open air. I’m reaching out for the walls when something slithers across my face—

I jump back and wave my hand around, connect with it again.

A string, dangling in the air.

I reach out, making my hand still, and the string falls back against my hand. I grip it and pull down.

A light, a single naked overhead light, comes on.

Hanging from the walls, medieval weapons. Lances, stars, battle-axes, cat-o’-nine-tails, maces. A full menu of torture devices.

I shudder but shake it off. I need to figure out a way out of here.

Three of the four walls are covered with this weaponry, but one wall is naked. Nothing hanging on it. Nothing but smooth wood.

Immediately next to it on the adjoining wall, a small button.

A buzzer?

With a trembling hand, I press the button.

I know, somehow, what will happen next: The wall slides open.

I drop to a knee, my weapon useless now without any bullets, and click on the flashlight.

A corridor. Naked walls, concrete floor.

The basement of 7 Ocean Drive.

Follow me

C’mon

“Aiden!” I call out, but I get no response. The hallway turns a sharp left into a giant room, just as dark as everywhere else in the basement. I shine my flashlight over the room, though the beam is weakening and I need to preserve the battery.

“Aiden!”

Boxes, old furniture, photographs and artwork — the kind of stuff in any basement.

And a staircase, leading up.

C’mon

Follow me

Be quiet

I approach the staircase slowly, not trusting my rubbery legs, my head throbbing like I have a hangover from being inside that room.

I take the stairs just as carefully, lightly touching each step before transferring my weight, unsure of the stability of this staircase.

When I reach the top of the stairs, the door is ajar.

Aiden must have blown through here a few minutes ago.

I take a breath and push the door open.

I turn the corner and shine the flashlight, the dwindling beam, over the open foyer of the house. The front door is straight ahead of me, across the foyer and the two ornate anterooms.

The words coming at me so fleetingly, like smoke, whispers—

Run go get out of here

Run!

“Aiden!” I call out again, my voice shakier this time, echoing upward, nothing in response but a groan from this haunted mansion.

I hear something upstairs, an elongated sigh. A house sound or a human sound?

I take a step up the stairs.

You don’t wanna go up there

Squeezing my eyes shut, as if it will lock out the whispers between my ears.

Don’t come up here

Go, leave, don’t come up here

“Aiden, please talk to me!” I cry.

The pressure mounting inside my chest again, the momentary reprieve I felt after leaving that room vanishing in the snap of a finger, everything returning like an avalanche, my heart pounding again, sweat on my face once more.

Every step an effort, every instinct telling me to turn back, run out the front door, there’s danger upstairs, but I move forward regardless, because I have to know, I have to finally know.

Even if it kills me.

I reach the landing on the second floor, the double doors open onto the second-floor hallway. I walk through like I’m in slow motion, like I’m wading upstream, but I’m not stopping now, so I turn left and head toward the master bedroom, the bedroom where Melanie Phillips and Zach Stern were brutally tortured, where various Holdens over the years committed brutal acts on others and on themselves.

“Aiden Willis!” I call, forcing the words out. “Aiden, I was wrong about you! I know that now! You — you saved my life that day. I remember now. You got me out of this house. Just — just please, please talk to me!”

One foot in front of the other down the ornate red-and-gold hallway, shining my dwindling flashlight beam in front of me, until I reach the threshold of the master bedroom.

“Aiden, are you in here?”

I shine my light over the room. Empty. Nobody here.

But near the bed, a lamp — another kerosene lamp, the liquid full in the hourglass-shaped clear bowl, a short wick protruding from atop the metal dome. Next to it, a book of matches. I tuck my gun in the back of my pants and pin the flashlight between my arm and body. I strike the match and light the wick, producing a healthy orange glow about the room.

Light, precious light, as my flashlight is on the verge of dying.

I head to the corner of the room, to the French doors and the wraparound corner balcony outside. I push open the French doors, cool air hitting my face, the wind swirling, and look out over Ocean Drive to the west.

I see a glimpse of him, the signature straw hair, the slight hunch to his posture — Aiden Willis running north on Ocean Drive, away from the Atlantic, from this house, from me and my questions, and disappearing into the woods.

I lean against the railing, the wind playing with my hair, my eyes fixed on that point where Aiden ducked into the woods. I’ll never catch up with him. He’s too far ahead, and much more familiar with every nook and cranny of this town.

Come here, he said to me as a boy. Follow me.

I’m trying to pull more from that memory, but the more I reach for it, the farther away it gets. I shake my head. It’s no use trying to force it. It’s like turning on high beams to see through fog; it only muddies it up more.

I remember his face, remember his words, remember the relief sweeping through me when he guided me out of that basement and up those stairs.

“But then what?” I whisper.

And why — why did Aiden come through Justin’s window the other night and try to attack me with that knife?

Deflated, defeated, I push myself off the railing. I curve around the corner to enter the bedroom from the south.

Where Noah Walker stands, training a gun on me.

117

“Don’t move, Murphy. Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”

I show him my empty hands. The flashlight left behind, on the bed. Justin’s revolver stuffed in the back of my pants, which he can’t see.

Focus, Murphy.

Assess — assess the situation.

I’m on the balcony by the railing. Noah is maybe eight, ten feet away, inside the room but just at the entrance to the balcony. The lamp, behind him, is sufficient to give me a decent look at his features — his eyes narrowed from the wind licking his face, stinging his eyes, his face crumpled up in anger, the gun trembling in front of him.

Anger — at me? For screwing up his plans? I guess he was having a pretty easy time killing people before I came along.

“I should kill you right now,” he hisses.

“What’s stopping you?” I say. My eyes cast about for options, but it’s pitch-black out here on the balcony. About my only option is jumping from the balcony and hoping I avoid the spiked fence, hoping I survive with just some broken bones.

Or charging him. He doesn’t look that comfortable holding that gun. Most of the people he killed were cut or stabbed or impaled. Maybe firearms aren’t his thing.

Still, he’s so close to me. He couldn’t miss me if he tried.

“I have a few questions,” he says.

“And you think I’m going to answer them?”

“Yeah, I do,” he says, “because I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to kill your boyfriend Justin.”

Justin. Roped into this because of me.

“Justin has nothing to do with this, Noah. Leave him out of it.”

Noah pauses. “He doesn’t know anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Murphy. I’m done with you screwing with my head. You know I actually started to care about you? What a freakin’ joke.”

Emotion in his voice with these last words, choking on them. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He’s upset, coming unraveled.

Something I can use, maybe.

“I started to care about you, too,” I say.

“Shut up! I don’t wanna hear that!”

He takes another step closer to me. I can almost feel the bitterness radiating off him. His chest heaving now. Shaking his head. “Why?” he asks. “Why did you do all this?”

“Do all what?” I ask as calmly as I can. “Try to catch a killer? Because it’s—”

“Stop it! Is that how you wanna play this? Even now, when there’s nobody else here to hear your lies? Do you want me to put a bullet through your head? Because I’ll do it. I swear I will.”

The gun bobbing slightly. Do I have a move here?

Dive to the ground and make him shoot wildly in the dark?

Then I see it, over Noah’s shoulder, at the far end of the bedroom, where the hallway meets the doorway.

The beam of a flashlight, searching along the floor.

Justin, limping forward down the hallway.

The swirling wind drowning out any noise he’s making, at least for me, and probably for Noah, too — at least I hope so.

Stall. Stall for time, Murphy.

“You’re the one who broke into the warehouse and stole those attorney files, aren’t you?” I ask.

“Damn straight I am,” he says. “Guess I beat you to them.”

Justin drawing closer. I’m willing myself not to look too closely at him, not to signal Noah.

Keep that flashlight beam down, Justin, or Noah will see it.

The flashlight turns off — Justin is at the threshold of the bedroom now, and the glow from the kerosene lamp is sufficient.

But the closer he gets, the more likely it is Noah will hear him, no matter how violently the wind swirls through this balcony and into the bedroom.

No matter how quietly Justin approaches, with long tiptoe strides.

Keep Noah talking.

“That was a nice move,” I say. “Getting those lawyer files before I could.”

Something in Justin’s hand, something long and thin — a golf club?

A golf club.

“Are those the last remaining copies?” I ask.

“You tell me, Murphy.”

Justin raising the golf club, holding it with two hands.

“How the hell should I know?” I ask.

“Shut up,” Noah spits. “Just stop with all your bullshit.”

Justin is only a few steps away now. It’s all I can do to pretend I don’t see him, not to tense up, not to give away his presence.

“What bullshit?” I ask.

“I said shut up! I’m done with this, Murphy. You know what’s in those lawyer files. You’ve known all along.”

Justin stops, the club poised like a baseball bat, ready for the most important swing of his life.

“I have no idea what’s in those files,” I say.

Noah does a double take, his head cocked, a hint of doubt crossing his face.

Then his eyes suddenly become alert, and he spins to his right just as Justin swings the golf club.

118

All at once—

Noah spins to his right and instinctively ducks—

The violent swing of the golf club, grazing the top of Noah’s head before continuing its momentum and splintering the wood on the balcony doorway—

Noah’s gun, hitting the other side of the doorway during his spin, falling from his hand onto the balcony floor.

I lunge for the gun as Noah, stunned, falls against the opposite side of the doorway.

I scoop up the gun in my hands and fall forward into the bedroom.

“Don’t move, Noah,” I say, jumping to my feet.

Noah, dazed, has managed to remain upright. His woozy eyes drift over to me and his gun, his Glock, now in my hands, now pointed at him.

“Shit,” he says. He touches the top of his head and finds blood on his fingers.

“Hands where I can see them,” I say. “Show me your palms.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“He has my gun,” Justin says, still clutching the golf club with two hands, like a weapon.

He doesn’t mean the revolver he lent me — that’s stuffed in the back of my pants.

“That old thirty-eight I showed you at my house,” Justin says. “Noah has it. He jumped me and took it off me.”

I look Noah over. In one jeans pocket, something — some papers rolled up and shoved inside, the edges protruding. The other front pocket, unclear, but a slight bulge, which could be the .38 special.

“What are those papers in your pocket?” I ask him.

“The lawyer papers,” he snarls. “In case you didn’t believe I had them.”

“And the other pocket?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I threw Justin’s gun in the front yard.”

“Show me your palms,” I say. “The first second you don’t, I shoot.”

Noah, his brows curled in a frown, shakes his head, a bemused laugh escaping from him as his eyes bore into me. “You’re good, Murphy. You’re very good. I gotta give you that. But guess what?”

He takes a step toward me.

“Don’t, Noah.”

“Isaac’s preparing warrants for your arrest as we speak,” he goes on. “For all of the murders. All of them. Did you know that, Justin?” Noah nods in Justin’s direction. “Does he know everything?”

“Shut up, Noah. It’s not going to work. And you take one more step, I start shooting.”

He takes another step toward me, but slowly, still showing his palms.

Pushing me, but not pushing me too far. Testing me.

“Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” he asks. “That night you broke into my house? You buzzed a bullet right past my ear, but you couldn’t finish me off.”

“That’s enough, Noah.”

“Why’d you get me out of prison?” he says.

“Because your trial was unfair,” I say, my voice shaking. My hands are shaking, too.

“My trial was unfair?” He lets out a bitter laugh. “You kill, what, eight people but suddenly you care about the justice system?”

He takes another step.

I fire a round into the floor near his feet. Noah jumps back, startled for a moment. But he quickly recovers.

“That’s the second time you deliberately missed me,” he says. “Why, Murphy? Why not kill me?” Heat coming to his face now, the snarl returning. “Why? So you could kill everyone I ever cared about and watch me suffer?”

His eyes are filling with tears now, his shoulders trembling.

“I don’t know who you think you’re fooling,” I say. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

My mind racing. Signals flying in all directions. He’s screwing with you, Murphy. He always does this. Anyone who could be this good, for this long, made a living out of mind-fucking people.

He takes another step toward me.

This time, I take a step back.

“Jenna, what are you doing?” Justin says.

“Yeah, Murphy, what are you doing?” Noah says, tears falling down his cheeks, his hands clenched in fists. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“I’m taking you in.”

“Jenna, you heard what he said,” says Justin. “Isaac’s gonna arrest you. We know that’s true. You heard Isaac say it himself at my house. Noah’s gonna walk away from this!”

Noah takes another step toward me, his eyes searching mine, pure bitterness in his expression.

I take another step back, an earthquake inside my head.

“You can’t let him get away with this!” Justin cries. “He killed Melanie! He killed your uncle! He sent Aiden to my house to kill you!”

Aiden.

Aiden at Justin’s house with a knife, coming through the window.

Noah shakes his head slowly, his eyes still on mine.

Aiden.

And then it happens. It comes to me, all at once, just with the mention of Aiden’s name.

I can’t be sure. I couldn’t prove it in a court of law.

But I think I finally figured it out.

I fire another round into the floor. Noah jumps back again.

His momentum temporarily stopped, I reach into the back of my pants and remove the revolver Justin lent me.

“Justin, catch,” I say.

Justin drops the golf club. I toss him his revolver, which he catches in both hands.

Noah steadies himself, looks to his right; Justin is now pointing his revolver at Noah.

Then Noah turns again and looks into my eyes, the odds against him mounting now, me holding Noah’s Glock, Justin holding his own revolver. Two people, two guns, two different angles.

I search his eyes for an answer. Every time I’ve looked into those eyes, I’ve received mixed messages, a series of crisscrossing signals, heat and passion and rage and lust and pure hatred.

My gun wavers as I replay everything in my head, sorting through it all, trying to make the puzzle pieces fit, everything flying at me at once like a tornado.

“Justin,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“Aiden didn’t come through your window to kill me.”

“What — what do you mean?” he asks.

“He came through that window to protect me,” I say. “To protect me from you.”

119

Still facing Noah, the Glock in my hand still trained on him, I see, in my peripheral vision, Justin move the gun away from Noah, toward me.

“I’m so tired,” I say. “I’m so tired of all of this.”

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Justin says. “But all the same — keep that gun aimed at Noah. If it moves one inch toward me, it’s a bad outcome for you.”

“It was you,” I say. “You’re the one who brought me to this house when I was a little girl. You and Holden the Sixth were going to kill me. Your first murder together, your initiation into the family or something, I don’t know. But I do know that Aiden rescued me. For some reason, Aiden never told anyone about you. Maybe you held something over him. That bloody knife, I’d guess — the one with Aiden’s and my fingerprints on it. The one that killed Holden the Sixth?”

Justin doesn’t say anything. I keep my eyes on Noah, who returns an intense stare.

“If I’m guessing,” I continue, “Aiden came here that day out of revenge, after Holden the Sixth killed his mother. He got his revenge. He killed Holden with that knife. And somehow you got hold of the knife, the murder weapon, and you held it over his head all these years. You threatened him, blackmailed him, whatever. Aiden would be easy to intimidate. He’s practically a kid even now.”

“Jenna—”

“And then you grew up. The boy who tried to kill me that day became the man who’s killed eight people. Then, when I started getting close, when it became convenient to pin all these murders on Aiden, you tipped off Officer Ricketts about the whereabouts of the knife. How’m I doing so far?”

“You’re doing quite well, Detective. Quite well.” Justin moves a few steps closer. “Now lower the gun and drop it, Jenna. Slowly, or I’ll get nervous.”

Noah remains motionless, save for the drop of his jaw, as I do what Justin says. I lower the Glock to my side and let it fall from my hand.

“You must have just figured this out,” he says. “Or you wouldn’t have tossed me the gun.”

“You mentioned Aiden,” I say. “He wouldn’t hurt me. I know that now. And you just confirmed it.”

“I guess I did. Quite true about Aiden. He’s your hero, after all, the young lad who rescued the damsel in distress all those many years ago. Too bad you realized it after you tossed me this gun. Life’s a game of inches, isn’t it? If it had come to you just a few seconds earlier, I wouldn’t be holding this gun. That’s gotta sting.”

Justin moves behind me, keeping both Noah and me in his sight and positioning himself beyond our reach. The right move, strategically. He didn’t get this far, for this long, without being smart.

“For what it’s worth,” Justin says, “I’d hoped that tonight would end differently.”

“You wanted me to kill Aiden when I came here looking for him. You knew this was where I’d come to look for him. You wanted me to kill him, to keep you clean. But you followed behind me, with your other gun, just in case it didn’t work out that way.”

“But I sure didn’t expect Noah,” he says. “The best-laid plans and all.”

Noah’s jaw clenches. I look at his left front pocket — was Justin right? Does Noah have Justin’s other gun, the .38 special?

“By the way, Noah,” Justin says. “In the future, if you think you’ve knocked someone unconscious, be sure they’re not faking. Stick ’em with a pin or something. And if you’re going to tie someone up with a rope, don’t just bind their hands behind their back. Bind their feet, too, and then bind the feet and hands together. It makes it a lot harder to get out.”

Footsteps behind me as Justin presses the revolver into the base of my skull.

“Not that it matters now,” he says, “but for the record, Jenna, I didn’t want anything to happen to you. You may find this hard to believe, but I really did want us to be together.”

I let out a bitter laugh.

“I did. Think of how good we’d have been together. Think of our children! Holden’s grandchildren.”

I stifle the urge to vomit, the bile at my throat. “You’re sick,” I say.

“Everyone’s sick,” he spits, pushing the muzzle of his gun into the base of my skull, forcing my head forward. “Everyone has it inside them. Some of us are a little more liberal about releasing it, that’s all.”

Noah is trembling, his eyes smoldering with pure hatred. “You killed Melanie,” he growls. “Right here in this room.”

“But that’s not even the best part,” says Justin. “The best part is you took the fall for it! Just like old times, with the school yard shooting. You’ve always been a reliable fall guy, Noah. I’ve never properly thanked you for that. How have those hands healed up, by the way, from your fun at Sing Sing?”

A furious, tortured smile plays on Noah’s face. “You’re gonna find out,” he says, “when I put them on your throat.”

“No, I think your hands are going on top of your head. And you’re going to move back toward the balcony. I know you have my thirty-eight special on you. If you make me nervous, this gun goes off. You’ll be wearing Jenna’s face on your shirt.”

Noah blinks, snaps out of his fury, looks at me, the gun shoved against my skull.

He backpedals from us, puts his hands on his head.

“You’ll never get away with this,” I say.

“Sure I will. Sure I will. The happy-go-lucky millionaire philanthropist who serves low-cost food to the middle class? Everyone loves me. Oh, and Jenna?” he says.

“Yes, Justin,” I say evenly.

He says it in a whisper. “After I kill you and Noah, I’m going to find your aunt Chloe and kill her, too. She’s going to love our little fun room downstairs. I’m thinking shish kebab.”

And then I feel the vibration against the back of my skull as Justin pulls the trigger.

120

Click.

Justin pulls the trigger again.

Another hollow click.

I dive for the Glock I just dropped, sliding to the floor, then spinning back, faster than Justin can say Damn, this revolver must not be loaded.

Thank you, Aiden, for emptying the bullets.

Justin looks at the gun, then me. A bitter smile on his face, then he shakes his head and throws the gun to the floor.

“No one will believe it,” he says. “Like Noah said, Chief Marks already has arrest warrants out with your name on it. So the only way you’ll get that justice you so richly seek is to shoot me.”

I get to my feet, the gun steady now, aimed at Justin’s chest.

He raises his arms in surrender. “How about it, Detective? Are you gonna shoot an unarmed man? Please, please,” he says in a mocking plea, dropping to his knees, “don’t shoot me, Ms. Murphy! Don’t shoot me!”

Sirens, in the distance, but not that distant. A 911 call, no doubt, after the gunshots I fired. Once Isaac heard that the shots came from the house on 7 Ocean Drive, he’d send the whole force.

I lower the gun slightly — not so low as to give Justin any ideas, but not pointing it directly at him.

“You’re not gonna do it,” says Justin, as if disappointed. “You’re really not.” His chest rises and falls, his face locked in a grimace.

It hits me then — he wants to die. He doesn’t want to spend his life in prison. Not one member of the Dahlquist clan ever spent a day in prison. He doesn’t want to break the streak.

“My favorite was your uncle,” he says. “Heating up that poker in the fireplace and driving it through his kidney.”

I shake my head. I’m not going to let him bait me.

“Do you wanna know what he said before I did it?”

The sirens getting closer. Multiple squad cars approaching.

“He said, ‘Help me, Jenna.’ He was begging.”

I close the distance between us, the gun aimed at his head.

“He was in so much pain,” Justin says.

I rear back, then drive my foot into his ribs, kicking him as hard as I can.

He doubles over on the floor.

“Pain like that?” I say.

He lets out a noise — pain, yes, but also amusement. “That’s the spirit,” he manages. “I knew you had it in you.”

“You’re gonna rot in prison, Justin,” I say. “You don’t get to go out in a blaze of glory, some dramatic suicide, like all your ancestors.”

Justin focuses on me with a hint of amusement. He gets himself to his hands and knees. “My ancestors?” he says.

“Shut up, Justin,” Noah says, suddenly stepping forward.

“My ancestors?”

Noah pulls the .38 special from his pocket and aims it at Justin. “I’m warning you, Justin, shut up.”

Justin lets out a wicked laugh. “Oh, Jenna, you think Holden is my father?”

I look at Noah. “What’s he talking about?”

“Nothing,” Noah says. “We’ll talk about it later, when everything’s calmed down.”

I step back, instinctively, separating myself from both of them. “We’ll talk about it now, Noah. And put down that gun!”

“Murphy—”

“Drop the gun, Noah! Now! Slide it over to me.”

The sound of tires squealing outside as the squad cars pull up to the mansion.

“Tell her, Noah,” says Justin, regaining an upright position, still on his knees. “Or better yet, show her those papers in your—”

Noah throws an uppercut, a violent left fist, connecting just under Justin’s chin, sending Justin off his knees and sprawling backward. Justin’s head smacks the floor, and this time he’s truly unconscious, no faking about it.

Noah with his back to me. The gun in his right hand.

“Don’t move, Noah. Don’t make a move.”

The sounds outside: officers rushing through the gate, up the walk, the front door of the mansion slamming open, footfalls downstairs, their voices, announcing their office, clearing each room on the lower level.

My mind races, thoughts bouncing every which way, trying to make it fit. Noah — Noah — it was Noah all along? Noah is Holden’s son? Everything spun upside down, everything unraveled, like a fist coming down on a jigsaw puzzle, scattering the pieces in all directions.

“Tell me, Noah,” I say, my voice shaking.

Noah slowly bends down and places the gun on the floor. Though Justin is no longer a threat, he kicks the gun across the room for good measure.

“I want to see those papers,” I say.

His back still to me, Noah removes the papers from his pocket, rolled up like an ancient scroll, and turns to face me.

“Put the gun down first,” he says.

“No chance. Toss them over.”

Noah drops his head, then starts walking over to me.

“Stop, now,” I say. “Keep your distance and toss them to me.”

He looks up at me, not breaking stride. “Jenna,” he says.

“Stop, Noah, or I’ll shoot!” My gun is aimed at his face, my feet spread.

“No,” he says.

He draws closer to me. Five steps. Three steps.

Footfalls on the stairs as officers race up to the second floor.

“I’ll shoot,” I say through my teeth.

“You’re not gonna shoot me, Jenna.”

My finger is on the trigger as Noah’s eyes lock on mine, as I feel the familiar heat of his approach.

And I can’t. I can’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why. I don’t know anything anymore.

I just know I can’t shoot him.

Noah puts his hand over the barrel of my gun — his Glock — and pushes it down.

He puts his forehead against mine.

“It’s okay now,” he says. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Tell me it wasn’t you,” I whisper. “Tell me you aren’t his son.”

Noah removes the gun from my hand. He replaces it with the scroll of papers, pressing them firmly into my palm.

His mouth moves to my ear.

“Holden didn’t have a son,” he says. “He had a daughter.”

121

“Here. It sucks, but it’s hot.”

Officer Lauren Ricketts places the Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me in the interview room at the substation. When I look up to thank her, I see black spots, and I feel the weight under my eyes.

“Rough night,” she says, rubbing my back. “Tomorrow will be better.”

Tomorrow is today. It’s past five in the morning.

And no amount of tomorrows will change it.

I look down again at the documents, still curved along the edges from having been rolled up in Noah’s pocket for several hours. I read through them again, for at least the twentieth time.

The first page, a piece of stationery bearing the name Lincoln Investigative Services. A letter to Holden Dahlquist VI.

Holden knew, or at least suspected, that he’d impregnated Aiden’s mother.

I flip the page. The news clipping I saw myself, at Aiden’s house:

The photo of Uncle Lang, holding the baby at the substation in Bridgehampton.

The next page, a photocopy of a handwritten note, the penmanship poor but legible:

My pulse banging like a gong, no matter how many times I read this note, a note from a terrified mother trying to protect her newborn daughter the only way she knew how — by abandoning her.

I flip to the next page, a court document:

I skip a bunch of the middle pages because they are legalese, just a bunch of lawyers’ words. The punch line at the final page:

I can picture her. Of course I can’t in reality, but my brain isn’t tracking reality now — I can picture my mother, visiting Uncle Lang like they did every summer, taking me from Lang, holding me in her arms and saying, I’ll love her. I’ll love this child.

A single tear, falling onto the page, a thick circular stain in the corner.

Still unable to believe it, though it makes all the sense in the world.

My physical differences from my parents and brother, especially the red hair. My nickname, the red sheep of the family.

Never quite feeling like I fit in.

Sometimes we tell our children little white lies, Chloe said to me.

She didn’t tell me — none of them told me, not Mom, not Dad, not Lang, not Chloe. They kept me in the dark to protect me. Protect me from whom, they didn’t know.

A little white lie.

And here I thought it was random — I thought I was a random victim at that house that day. When in reality, Holden was trying to kill me to end the Dahlquist bloodline. First he ran down Aiden’s mother — my mother — with a car, then he had Justin scoop me up and bring me to the house to finish the job.

I would’ve died in that house if it weren’t for Aiden, coming to avenge his mother’s death.

Chief Isaac Marks pops his head in the door, measuring the look on my face before deeming it safe to enter.

“Murphy,” he says. “We’re done with Noah’s interview. So you two are free to leave.”

I nod and push myself out of the chair, my legs uncertain.

“Murphy, I–I’m sorry,” he says. “I was a jerk. And I had you all wrong. I thought you were a loose cannon hassling poor Aiden for no reason. And then I — well, I admit for a time there, I—”

“You thought I was a serial killer.”

He throws up a hand.

“That’s okay,” I say, “for a time there, I thought you were, too.”

He laughs, which might, under the circumstances, be the best response of all.

“When Noah showed me those investigative records,” he says, “and it turned out you were the daughter of — I mean, I thought you’d been playing me all along.”

That’s what Noah thought, too.

“Plus, your fingerprints on that knife—”

“I got it,” I say. I may not like it, but I have so much emotion stirred up inside me right now, I don’t have room for anger.

“Justin’s spilling like a volcano,” he says. “Now that we have him in custody, he won’t shut up. He’s proud of it. He says he’s part of the legacy now, he’ll go down in history, et cetera.”

“I’m sure he feels that way.”

“He told us about everything in 1994, too. Apparently, Holden saw you and your family walking to the beach one day, right past his house. He got one look at you and — I guess there’s a strong resemblance to your biological mother. He followed you around the beach all day, then he hired an investigator, and — well, you know the rest. You got the investigator’s file right there. Then he had Justin snatch you up and bring you to the house—”

“Isaac,” I say, raising a hand. “I don’t want to know the details. I don’t remember and I don’t want to remember.”

“Sure. Yeah, sure, Murphy. Well, I’ll see you next week, then. If you’re ready.”

I shake my head. “You need me to testify at the prelim?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He places my badge and my gun on the table.

“You don’t think I’m going to lose my best cop, do you?” he says. “I may be a horse’s ass on occasion, but I’m not stupid.”

122

I walk to the cemetery on Main Street, the cemetery where Winston Dahlquist and his descendants are buried. The afternoon air is mild and smells of the rain this morning.

Just down from the Dahlquist plot, Aiden Willis is busy planting flowers in a vase by some tombstone. Back at work already. Always the same, the raggedy shirt, the baseball cap turned backward, the scarecrow hair. He surely takes after his father, not his mother.

Yesterday, the DA’s office officially announced that it had no basis to proceed with murder charges against Aiden for the death of Holden VI. Aiden was too young at the time to have been charged as an adult, and the circumstances, they said, “strongly suggest that his use of force was justified.”

That might be the understatement of the year.

Aiden stops what he’s doing when he sees me approach, squints at me.

I don’t really know what to say to him. I have no sense of family with him. We couldn’t be less alike. We’ve never known each other. We’ve never shared a single thing, other than a mother.

“Hey,” I say.

His eyes scatter about, as always, never holding a gaze.

“You doin’ okay?” he asks me.

“Me? Yeah, sure. Listen, Aiden, I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I thought — I thought you were a part of this. I had no idea it was Justin.”

He nods, his eyes roaming around the ground at my feet.

“Did you?” I ask, uncertain if I should even ask. “All these murders? Did you know it was him?”

His eyes go blank a moment, as if he’s lost in a thought — more accurate, probably, to say lost in a feeling. “Didn’t know for sure,” he says. “Couldn’ta ever proved nothin’. Who’d believe me, anyhow? I’m just a ditch-digger. He’s got all that money and shit.”

“And he had the knife you tossed out the window,” I add.

For a moment, Aiden’s eyes focus, though not on me, looking off in the distance, his mouth forming a small o. “He said he kept it somewheres for safekeepin’. Case I ever got any ideas, he said.”

A not-so-subtle threat. Don’t mess with me, Justin was saying to Aiden, or the cops will suddenly find this bloody knife. Fuck with me and I’ll send you to prison.

He tortured Aiden. He made Aiden shoot up the school yard with him a year after Holden’s death — one of the many things Justin has bragged about to the police — and who knows what else he said and did to him over the years.

“What about me?” I ask. “Did you know who I was?”

His eyes are still darting around, but a sheen of tears covers them. He shakes his head. “When you first came back to town, first time I saw you — you looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure it. Then I finally ’membered where I’d seen you, from all that time ago when we was kids, that day at the Dahlquist house. I didn’t know why you’d come back. Couldn’t figure. But I didn’t know that you were my — that we was—”

The flowers, halfway in the vase, start to tip over. Aiden reaches for them.

“You should probably get back to your work,” I say.

Aiden fixes up the flowers, sets them down firmly, turns to me in his indirect, no-eye-contact way. “I’s too young to know ’bout you at the time. I’da been only little when you was born. One time, when I’s older, I saw a picture of her, with her belly.”

I saw it, too. The photo from the scrapbook, with the baby bump.

“She said the baby didn’t live. She got real sad.”

Probably the same thing that she told Holden VI, that I didn’t live, that I was stillborn.

A little white lie. To protect me, so Aiden wouldn’t look for me. So Holden wouldn’t look for me. So nobody would ever look for me.

His darting eyes, just for a single moment, make contact with mine before skittering away again. “You look like her,” he says. “A good bit like her.”

“I’m lucky. She was very pretty. And courageous. She did a brave thing for me. So did you, Aiden. If there’s anything I can—”

“You wanna see her grave?” he asks.

I start to speak, but a lump fills my throat. I nod and follow him.

It’s a simple grave, farther to the south of the cemetery, an ordinary headstone kept up pristinely.

Our beloved mother. Even though, for all practical purposes, Aiden was an only child. Even though, as far as he knew, I didn’t survive the birth. Still, he included me, the sibling he never really had, the sibling he never knew.

My — our — biological mother. The woman who gave me up to save me. A prostitute who surely wanted something better for herself, and for her son.

And for her daughter.

July 12, 1994 — the day Gloria was killed in a hit-and-run. The day before the seven hours of hell, when I was plucked off the street and taken to 7 Ocean Drive, so Holden could take my life, too, and end any vestige of the tortured, maniacal Dahlquist bloodline.

I look over at Aiden, whose eyes have filled with tears.

“I still miss her,” he says, his voice quaking. “You’da — you’da liked her.”

“I know I would have.” I take Aiden’s hand in mine. “But you still have family. You still have me. You’re my hero, Aiden. And you’re my brother.”

I lean over and kiss him on the cheek. He recoils slightly. I don’t get the sense that a lot of women have kissed him in his life.

“Okay,” he says awkwardly. His face brightens just a bit. “That’d be okay.”

123

I nestle my feet into the sand and let out a long sigh. The beach is utter chaos in mid-August, kids running everywhere, boats and parasails and sand castles, but to me it feels like complete and total peace.

Four months, almost to the day, since it all happened.

Four months since Justin’s murderous ways were exposed and he was taken into custody, a now-infamous killer who will go down in history with the legions of others. Someone told me they did a Google search on his name and got over ten thousand hits.

Hooray for him.

“Let’s go watch,” says Noah, sitting next to me.

“Not sure I want to.”

“Oh, c’mon. Come on. You don’t wanna watch?”

I relent, pushing myself out of the sand, fitting my toes into my sandals, my fingers intertwined with Noah’s.

“Your hair’s getting long again,” I say. “Are you going back to Surfer Jesus?”

“Hey, be nice to me,” he says, squeezing my hand. “I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been shot at by a cop two times.”

“But she intended to miss each time,” I add.

“So she says. So she says.”

We climb onto the pavement of the parking lot and walk up Ocean Drive.

A thick crowd is gathered at the gate of 7 Ocean Drive. A couple of news crews as well. It’s been like that ever since everything happened. They say there was a spike in tourism this summer due to all the people who wanted to come see this house.

So there will be a few people, some shop owners, who might be sorry to see what’s about to happen. But I think most people will approve.

“Just in time,” Noah says.

The wrecking ball slams into the roof first, crushing the slate inward, the spears and ornamental gargoyles disappearing in a satisfying rush, a collective gasp of awe from the crowd. They told me it will take hours to knock down the entire mansion. I told them I didn’t care how long it took, I just wanted everything gone. The house. The tunnel and dungeon beneath. The carriage house.

It’s my property, after all. That’s what all the lawyers concluded after reviewing the trust documents. The property went into trust because nobody knew that Holden VI had left behind any offspring. So now it’s mine.

It won’t be for long. I wish I could open a museum or a shelter for battered women or something on this property, but this is prime real estate, and there are zoning laws designed to protect its value.

So I’ve put this massive lot up for sale, hopefully to a nice family who will build a nice new house with a very different future. The Realtors quoted me an estimate that’s more money than I’d make in my lifetime, and far more money than I’ll ever need. So I’ll keep a fraction for myself and give the rest of the proceeds to Aiden Willis.

Another whack from the wrecking ball, this time taking out the wraparound balcony, the master bedroom where so many people lost, or took, their lives — centuries of horror gone with one crushing boom.

“I’m gonna miss that house,” says Noah.

I laugh. It feels good to laugh. Odd, unusual, but good.

“But speaking of houses,” he says, “those rooms aren’t going to paint themselves.”

Our new place, he means. Not far down the road from Uncle Lang’s old house. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom in a nice, quiet spot. Quiet sounds good right about now. We cosigned the loan, on the salaries of a newly promoted detective, first grade, and the owner of a new handyman business.

Seeing this house, even in its deliciously beaten and battered form now, brings back everything from that final night.

I lean into Noah. “You were that sure I wouldn’t shoot you?” I ask.

He cradles me with an arm. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “It was clear that you were madly in love with me.”

I smile to myself. I am, in fact, madly in love with this man.

I watch the wrecking ball do its work. I said I didn’t want to watch, but now I’m fixated. Now I have to see it. I have to see every single piece of limestone battered and knocked to the ground. I need to see every inch of earth turned over—

Noah looks at me, sees the intensity in my face.

“Y’know what?” he says. “I changed my mind. This is boring. This house is old news. I wanna go to our new house.”

This man understands me, sometimes better than I understand myself.

“Me too,” I say.

We walk off, hand in hand, leaning against each other, the sun beating down on us.

Behind us, another boom, the sound of crushing rocks, another awed gasp from the crowd, but neither of us looks back.