I let go suddenly and he takes a step back, before recovering. He drawls deliberately slowly, “So dramatic. Very impressive.” But I can tell he’s shaken. Asshole’s used to tormenting people from behind a computer screen. Has he ever been held accountable face-to-face?
Spiegler scrawls a rough map and a few notes, then holds the paper out. “That’s as close as I can get you. The last three turns don’t have any road signs or markings, so I don’t think you can make it in the dark.”
I snatch the paper and pull up a map on Glenn’s phone, glancing back and forth at the instructions and zooming in on the screen until finally I see it, a cleared space in the middle of the woods roughly the shape of the building on the blueprint. Is that where Ava is? I set it as our destination and nod to Glenn.
Spiegler starts inching away from us, edging himself closer to the street, and Glenn’s hand shoots out, grabbing him by the upper arm. “Any security we need? Any codes or hidden keys? Remember, you only go free if we find her.”
Spiegler’s not scared enough for me, not half as scared as I was, standing in that parking lot, sure I was going to lose everything. He holds out a hand for the paper and adds a series of numbers before giving it back to me. “I can’t swear she hasn’t changed the code. She’s not stupid.”
I just want my sister back so I can go home. My whole life is there—my husband, my daughter, my friends. I have to believe I can rebuild everything my lies have shattered, and I won’t let Spiegler make me lose sight of that goal.
But there’s a furtive gleam in his eyes, like he still has the upper hand. He knows something more, something about what Cristina’s done to Ava. He’s amused at the thought of what we’ll find after racing through the wilderness.
Glenn doesn’t let go. “What if he contacts Cristina? The minute we’re gone, he could warn her.”
I study Spiegler, his brown hair in a styled pompadour, his eyes wide in false innocence. He did say Cristina called from burners, implying he didn’t have her number. But he’s also a lying liar. I should demand his phone, but instead I ask, “Why? Why’s Cristina doing this? Why take Ava? What does she want?”
Surprise flickers through his eyes before he says simply, “Your mother. Cristina wants to be her daughter. Her only daughter.”
“But they haven’t worked together in years.”
“Three years, almost to the day. That’s how long she’s been planning this.”
“Why didn’t she just kill us? Why is she playing games?”
Any hint of a smile is gone from Spiegler’s face. “This isn’t a game to Cristina. The science is her mission, and she thinks you and Ava are emotional distractions for your mother.”
A familiar pang hits my breastbone and I feel unwanted, insignificant. A week ago I would have mocked the idea that my sister and I mattered at all to our parents. But that was before they distracted the reporters, before their awkward expressions of love. Now I think Cristina must understand my mother better than I ever have. I can’t linger on this regret. “Why would she take Ava? Why not me?”
“Ava was easier to find, and you were easy to frame. Using Ava as her guinea pig just makes her lab work that much more fun.”
Something in his expression makes me think he’s been on the receiving end of Cristina’s crazy in the past. Maybe money and sadism weren’t the only reasons he helped his sister.
“How do we know she’s still alive?”
“Until Cristina finishes her experiment, your sister will be fine. How strong is Ava, mentally?”
Glenn’s face has been getting grimmer as Spiegler has been speaking. Roughly he yanks at Spiegler’s blazer. “Give me your phone. And turn out your pockets.”
Spiegler pulls out his phone and holds it up, allowing Glenn to take it. He digs into the pockets of his trousers, pulling out a slim black wallet and the off-white pocket linings. Nothing else. Not a tissue, not a breath mint. From his blazer pocket he produces a name tag with a tangled-up lanyard.
“Anything else?” Glenn gives him a shake.
“That’s everything, officer. Let me go.”
“If you warn her, if you’ve lied about anything …”
“You’ll do what?” Spiegler puffs his chest, and I can’t help myself. He knew Cristina took Ava, he helped frame me, and now if anything happens, if we get to the woods and Ava’s already dead, he’ll have escaped without any penalty.
I get in his face, close enough to smell his licorice breath freshener. “Put him in the trunk. If there’s a problem, we can pull him out. Hell, maybe we can trade him for Ava.”
Now Spiegler can’t get away from me, not with Glenn holding his arm, holding it so hard it probably hurts. He looks at me with fear crinkling the corners of his eyes.
But he addresses me as if we were the only two people here. “What do you really want? Revenge on me, or your bitch of a sister back?”
My hands draw into fists, my nails cutting into my palms. It’s like he’s in my head, calling Ava a bitch like I have so many times before. But she’s alone and afraid. And my anger at Spiegler almost made me forget how much she needs me. “Let him go, Glenn,” I say. “He’ll just slow us down.”
Glenn doesn’t let go. “I could knock him out, or we could tie him up, or—”
Then the door from the bar’s kitchen opens, the light temporarily blinding in the dark alley.
With a quick twist Spiegler breaks free and is gone, leaving his empty blazer hanging from Glenn’s fist.
We can’t stop him from warning Cristina, we can’t guarantee Ava will be at the cabin or that she’ll even be alive.
But I have to go after her.
And pray we’re not too late.
CHAPTER
30
AVA
I DON’T KNOW HOW long I’ve been hanging over the edge of the abyss, my feet perched on a tiny platform, my head tied into one position, facing the place where the movie plays.
My bound hands are now so numb I can’t feel them at all. Layers of tears have dried on my cheeks and caked my eyelashes. Still the cycle continues—a video of Beckett, bound and terrified, then Cristina reappears with new threats, demanding more answers. “What if I told you that we’ve framed your husband for your disappearance, that he’ll be arrested for your murder? Now will you tell me everything?”
Whenever I balk, the screen shifts to show the hooded man, his body spasming with electric shocks. After the second time, I don’t argue or resist. I tell her everything she asks, anything I can think of. My social security number, my kindergarten teacher’s name, the alarm code to my house, my first memory of my mother, a stream of unconnected answers, every scrap of information I’ve ever known.
Maybe a few days ago I would have lied, spun some kind of tale, but today I am powerless, physically and emotionally. I care about Beckett more than I care about my money, my information, my own pride. I didn’t know I had this much caring in me.
Only when Cristina leaves and I’m alone in the vault am I free.
“Please,” I cry to the darkness. “Please let him be.”
I scream until my voice fails completely.
But no one is listening.
I am helpless to save myself or Beckett or anyone.
Not every story has a happy ending.
* * *
ZOE
As Glenn drives us through the woods at night, I feel like anything could happen. I’ve sent the map to my parents and told them we are on our way. The police might show up to help us or arrest us. We could find Ava. Or we’ll find her remains. Maybe we’ll save her, or maybe we’ll all be captured and tortured too. This is the moment when all endings are still possible.
The darkness seals us into the car, and the tiny light from the map on Glenn’s phone seems disproportionately bright. It highlights his lower jaw and the hard set of his mouth. If we’re too late to save Ava and the two of us are the ones who find her … No. I can’t even think it. Nothing Glenn and I shared before means a
nything compared to this moment. We both love Ava, more than proving our innocence, more than our own safety.
I know he must have regretted our affair—especially now—but the thought doesn’t bring the stabbing pain it once did. It’s diluted like a childhood memory of a broken limb. I remember the events leading up to our breakup, I remember the aftermath, but the poison has drained from it.
But the memory of Andrew packing his bag, his hunched shoulders, his grim mouth, is agony. I didn’t know what loss was when Glenn left me. All I lost was him. Losing Andrew means losing an entire life—taking Emma to her first day of kindergarten, a thousand mornings kissing him as he leaves for work, making plans for our future. Year after year after year watching Emma grow and loving Andrew more. When I threw that rock at Ava, I didn’t know what losing was. Three years won’t be long enough to recover from this loss. Three lifetimes won’t heal me.
I’d sell my soul for more time, but who knows if we’ll even survive this night.
I tilt my head back against the seat. This is my only shot at earning back everything I’ve lost. My family and my sister.
We’re hurtling along a road that’s rutted and rough. The car bounces, almost skidding, and my breath catches. “Don’t wreck us before we get there.”
Glenn doesn’t answer. I can’t tell if he’s slowed down at all between the blur of shadowy trees, the bumpy road, and the rising acid in my stomach.
This is exactly how I used to feel on our way back from the boarding camp my parents sent us to every summer. For reasons known only to them, they’d chosen one in the Catskills. Each July we made the seven-hour trip in a single shot, Ava and me together in the back seat. And I was usually the one who got carsick. No music, no radio, just my parents in a conversation we couldn’t quite hear for hours. Ava had an iron stomach, and she would read out loud to me while I closed my eyes and tried to forget my queasiness. Her voice made the stories come alive. The thing that differentiated each year was not what happened on the drive—nothing ever happened—but what she read to me.
Now the only way I can quell my nausea is by thinking of her clear, precise voice. And suddenly it occurs to me that maybe she has been trying to talk to me, all these years, through those goddamn books.
I look over to where Glenn is just a shadow hunched over the steering wheel. “Did she ever write about you the way she did about me?”
I can’t make out his expression in the dark. The silence stretches between us, and I let it bloom, giving him space to answer. Finally, after a long sigh, he says, “Not directly.”
“Why was she doing it? I mean, she was never interested in my life for real, just in her books.”
“I don’t know, Zoe. I’m not much for fiction. I’ll tell you one thing. Your sister does not waste her time writing about anything that doesn’t interest her.”
I sit with that for a minute, letting it sink in. “What about when she wrote about us? Right after …” No need to finish. He knows which book I mean.
“The way I see it, writing is the way she works out how she feels. It’s like putting the situation into Bizarro-world and running through her emotional options.”
“I thought she was messing with me. When I was in culinary school, she wrote Santoku, about a serial killer who fillets her victims with a santoku chef’s knife.”
And with certainty I know that if I told Andrew this story, he would laugh. Hard. And none of the things Ava wrote would matter then, because they aren’t real. All those years she drove me crazy because the words felt like an indictment. Sometimes it was subtle, a crazy detective mispronouncing a word like I did; or creepy, like the time I got pulled over for speeding, and even though she couldn’t have known about it, her next thriller featured a woman killing traffic cops; or really personal, like with me and Glenn. But it was all bullshit. Just fiction. Not true.
We drive in silence a few more minutes, until watching the road disappear under the hood of the car starts to make me even dizzier. Then Glenn says, “If she wrote a book about your life right now, I mean back in Texas, would you bail on it for something new?”
“Of course not.” I’ve never been so instantly sure of anything.
“Then maybe all those other things were wrong choices in the first place.”
He’s right. My life in Texas is the one thing I’m not willing to give up. Lying about my identity brought me to the core of my true self. Ava couldn’t ever take this from me. If I lose Andrew and Emma, it’s because of the choices I made. And just like that, all the nausea, the fear, and the adrenaline rush back, pulsing through me with nowhere to go.
“Wait.” I squint at the phone, the light leaving dim halos in my vision when I look up. “There’s a turn.”
Without answering, Glenn wrenches the wheel and we take a sharp angle. I’m thrown against the door. Then the trees begin to thin out, and the pale light of a full moon filters through.
Finally we bump out into an open clearing and come to a stop.
Through the windshield, I see a house, a sort of fancy hunting lodge with huge glass windows. A faint glow shines from an interior room; the porch lights are unlit. I don’t see any other cars parked out front.
I suck in a hard breath. This is the house in the horror movie, and we’re the sacrifices headed straight inside. No, I can’t think like that. Not a horror movie, a fairy tale, just like Ava used to tell, where two sisters defeat the evil witch. But in the chill air, happily-ever-after seems like fantasy.
Glenn turns off the ignition. Before he opens the door, I blurt out, “Wait, do you have a gun or something? Because of work?”
He looks back at me, surprised and a little defensive. “I’m an analyst. I sit at a desk.”
“But the government—”
“You know,” he says, opening the glove box, “owning a gun increases your risk of being a victim of gun violence.”
He pulls out something small and presses it into my hand. “It’s a multipurpose tool,” he says. “Big knife blade, also a screwdriver, pliers, and a corkscrew. Just in case.”
“Don’t you want it?” If I take this, Glenn won’t have any defense. I don’t care what he says; I’d feel safer with a gun.
“I’ll be fine.” He gets out of the car, and I follow.
In the autumn night, a chill breeze raises goose bumps on my arms. Spiegler gave us the right directions, but did he somehow warn his sister? It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t have.
The house looks bigger here, looming above us, limned by the moonlight. Anything, anyone could be waiting inside. And it’s quiet, quiet as death. Behind it I can see more branches stretching out, and above that, stars glow sharply against the inky sky. There’s a faint milky spot I recognize as the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. Let it be a sign.
But with the whispering forest stretching for miles around us and the menacing hunting cabin before us, hope seems very far away.
CHAPTER
31
ZOE
WE APPROACH THE house in silence. Without a keypad, the code Spiegler gave us is no good. I see the bubble of a security camera affixed to the wall and put my hand directly on top of it. Even if someone is watching, they won’t know who we are.
Glenn tries the knob, and the door is locked. If Ava weren’t in danger, we could just knock, bluff our way in, but I can’t forget the word SERE and my father’s description of Cristina as “overzealous.” Glenn steps back as if he’s thinking about breaking a window, then rushes forward, throwing his shoulder against the door. It shivers but doesn’t break. He pulls back, considering, and this time he kicks it hard, right by the knob. Once, twice, and the door flies open, a small piece of metal—the strike plate—hitting the ground at my feet.
And we are inside, with an open kitchen to the right and a large living area to the left. Both dark and quiet. I run straight ahead to a back hallway, flinging open one door and then another, checking behind a shower curtain, under a bed, calling my sister’s name. After all, we
broke in the front door, so there’s no point in being quiet anymore.
This isn’t the slow, methodical search I did of Ava’s house. I don’t care about the prim suitcase standing in a corner or the contact lens solution on the bathroom sink. Cristina Spiegler isn’t an enigma I want to unravel. I’m looking for my sister, and everything else is just visual clutter. Not in the closet. Not behind that door. Not here. Not there.
What if I find Ava’s body? My heart grows cold. Not Ava. Our past, our future gone. I hurry, as if I can outrun my thoughts. I hear a panting, whimpering noise, but it’s me, struggling to suck in air and expelling little sobs at the same time.
Nothing. I find nothing, and it’s like a nightmare of an abandoned world. Bedrooms empty, bathrooms and laundry room and closets all empty. I’m alone in the hallway; in the front room Glenn’s shoving furniture around, stomping on the floor and listening after each thump.
My puzzlement must show on my face, because he says, “There’s got to be a way underground to get to the missile silo. I’ve already been through the kitchen, and you opened the doors in the back, right?”
I did, I know I did, but fluttery panic rises again. Turning, I see a rustic staircase leading to a loft. Even though the loft itself is visible from here, with plush leather furniture and bookshelves, I have to make sure Ava isn’t lying helpless just feet above us. I take the steps two at a time, heaving myself over the last one onto the wide planks of the floor.
There’s a rug the color of dried blood and windows reflecting the interior lights so completely that they seem to close the room off from the outside world. Below me I can still see Glenn looking for an entrance or trapdoor. Ava’s not here. But there is another room that opens off to the side, an open doorway through which I cannot see.
It’s so quiet up here, I falter. Ava could be behind any corner in this house, just out of sight. I might find her, save her, and a future of possibilities would open. Andrew and Emma and a life of reconciliation and joy.
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