“Not this.”

  “I promise I won’t tell anyone. And sometimes I wish really, really bad things, too.”

  “You do?”

  Aunt Dee nods.

  Ashley takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I used to wish something would happen to my mother, so that I could have a new mom,” she says in a rush, then collapses against her aunt in a rush of tears and guilt.

  Aunt Dee holds her close and strokes her hair, exactly the way a mother does…

  Exactly the way Ashley always wistfully longed for her own mother to hold her.

  But she never did.

  And now she never will.

  Brynn saw Fiona’s mountain retreat once before, when the two of them were driving around in a realtor’s Mercedes SUV looking at houses for Fee to buy.

  Nestled on a wooded lot along a steep, winding road, the three-bedroom log cabin has painted green shutters, a pair of dormered windows, and a porch with wooden rocking chairs.

  Brynn thought it was infinitely charming that warm spring afternoon, in dappled sunlight.

  This frosty autumn morning, shrouded in cobwebs of heavy mountain mist, the cabin has a foreboding air.

  Seven lonely miles from Cedar Crest, out of the nearest cell phone tower’s range, Brynn feels completely isolated from the rest of the world.

  But you aren’t. Not really.

  She should be reassured, aware that a couple of armed officers lurk just out of sight in the woods.

  Instead, the palpably eerie sensation of being watched only makes her more apprehensive. Even the two dormered windows loom like hooded eyes as she walks slowly up the path from the car, tucking her keys into the back pocket of her jeans.

  It’s going to be okay.

  At least, that’s what Garth had the nerve to say this morning, when they faced each other in the kitchen after a sleepless night.

  He didn’t look any more convinced than she felt.

  Even ifthis turns out okay…they might not be, together. How is she supposed to ever look him in the eye again, knowing about him and Tildy?

  But he did forgive you for what you did so long ago,a small voice reminds her.Are you really unwilling to forgive him for something he did back then?

  It isn’t just about that, though. It’s that he never told her. That he and Tildy and, yes, even Fee, shared this sordid little secret behind her back.

  Then again, now that the initial shock and humiliation have worn off a bit…

  No. You can’t just forgive him for something like this. It was wrong.

  Hugging and kissing her sons good-bye before Garth drove them out to the Cape was the hardest thing she ever had to do.

  The second hardest was to sit there while her husband told her he slept with one of her best friends.

  Yes, it happened years ago.

  No, they weren’t married.

  It could have been worse.

  Still, it’s pretty bad.

  They didn’t acknowledge it this morning before Garth left. They didn’t say much of anything at all.

  The boys were smiling happily as Garth drove off with them. Left alone in the doorway, she was crying.

  Her father and Sue think Garth is taking Brynn away for her birthday, and were happy to keep the boys for a few days.

  If they had any idea about what’s really going on…

  But, of course, they don’t.

  Garth will turn around and drive right back to Cedar Crest, where he’ll keep a low profile as the day wears on. Quincy instructed him to go to police headquarters. If all goes as planned, Brynn will be reunited with her husband there…

  Right after Fee and Tildy’s killer comes after her as well, and is apprehended.

  Brynn is utterly overwhelmed every time she allows herself to think about what Garth told her. It’s been so distracting that she still can barely grasp the monumental day—and perhaps night—that lie ahead.

  She tries not to think about it as she plods up the cabin’s wooden steps, but she can’t help feeling as though she’s walking the plank to certain doom.

  The wind kicks up to rustle dry leaves and creak branches in the trees overhead. A crow lifts from its perch with a fluttering of wings and a haunting caw that echoes into the foreboding sky.

  Brynn bends to lift a corner of the brown straw Welcome mat, looking for the key Fiona said is always here.

  It isn’t.

  She has a momentary flare of hope that they can call off this whole dangerous charade—

  Oh. Here’s the key, on the far side of the mat.

  And they can’t call it off. This is the only way to catch her.

  Rachel.

  Brynn still can’t reconcile the memory of her fun-loving old friend with the murderous fiend who slaughtered Fiona and Tildy. Maybe when she fell, her brain was damaged…

  And she was transformed into a serial killer?

  But how? Why?

  Rage. Fury. That’s Quincy’s theory, and it makes sense.

  Rachel was betrayed by her friends who abandoned her to die.

  Now she wants revenge.

  Ashley stares at the familiar two-story yellow-brick building from the passenger’s seat of Aunt Dee’s rental car.

  She has to do this sooner or later, she knows. She just wishes it was later.

  Then again, it’s late enough. School started two hours ago, but she was so reluctant to go that Aunt Dee took her out for breakfast—strawberry pancakes. They lingered over their meal, talking about everything imaginable.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?” Aunt Dee asks now, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  Ashley shakes her head. It will be hard enough to go in there alone, late, with everyone staring at her. She can just imagine how they would gape if she walked in with someone who looks like the ghost of her dead mother.

  “Your dad said he’ll pick you up after school,” Aunt Dee tells her, and Ashley nods bleakly. She knows that; she talked to Daddy, too, when he called the inn first thing this morning.

  “I miss you, baby girl,” he told Ashley. “Are you all right?”

  She told him she was fine.

  Then she put Aunt Dee back on the phone, and she figured Daddy must be asking her whether Ashley had had any nightmares, because Aunt Dee said, “No, not at all. She slept right through the night like a baby.”

  “Just keep your chin up, Ashley,” Aunt Dee tells her now, softly, and squeezes her shoulder gently. “You’ll get through this day. You can get through anything, if you put your mind to it.”

  Ashley jerks her head around sharply, half-expecting to see her mother sitting there.

  No. It’s Aunt Dee, wearing a bright-colored patchwork poncho Mom would never wear, her long hair hanging loose down her back.

  “What’s the matter, Ashley?”

  “Nothing. You just…You sounded like her. And…It made me miss her. Kind of more than I even thought I would.”

  Aunt Dee smiles sadly and touches her cheek.

  Then, spine steeled and head held high, Ashley marches into school, thinking that her mother would be proud of her.

  The cabin’s wooden, glass-paned door creaks loudly as Brynn pushes it open.

  She hesitates on the threshold, trying not to think about it.

  I walked into the house. I turned my head…

  And I saw her.

  Even now, after so many days have gone by and she’s had a chance to absorb the horror of that day, the intense, vivid memory catches her off guard.

  Will that happen now, to me? Am I going to be slaughtered like that?

  No.

  Because the cabin isn’t empty. Last night, Quincy installed a third officer someplace inside, ready to rush to Brynn’s aid with the others, gun drawn.

  She can feel his hidden presence as she reaches inside the door and flips on the light.

  I don’t want to go in.

  But she has to; her anxiety and pregnancy-stimulated bladder, if nothing else, demands that she move forward.

  Stepping into the cabin at last, she looks around the deserted great room: rustic furniture, woven area rugs, stone fireplace.

  Once, she thought it was welcoming. Today, as she forces herself to close and lock the door behind her, it feels like a tomb.

  She sets her overnight bag on the floor.

  Outside, in the distance, she hears a rumble of thunder.

  Yes. It’s supposed to rain.

  She listens for it but hears nothing.

  Nothing at all.

  But someone is here, in the cabin with her, waiting.

  Not for the rain.

  She can almost hear the steady breathing in time with her hollow-sounding footsteps across the timber floor.

  Yes, someone is here—It’s the cop,she reminds herself.You’re perfectly safe.

  She makes her way toward the second-floor bathroom, flipping on lamps as she goes, to banish the early-morning shadows. Nobody said she had to sit here in the dark, waiting for the attack.

  She goes to the bathroom quickly, her uneasiness building, instinctively feeling driven to get back downstairs. Somehow, it seems safer there.

  As she turns to flush the toilet, she sees a faint pink smear on the white paper in the bowl, and her heart stops.

  Blood.

  She’s spotting.

  Oh, God. Oh, God, no.

  Panic swells into her throat. She frantically unfurls another length of tissue, swipes it between her legs, and inspects it.

  Yes. She’s bleeding.

  Not much.

  Not yet, anyway.

  She has to get out of here. She has to get to a doctor.

  As she hurries back down the hall toward the stairs, hearing the first droplets falling on the roof overhead, she breaks Quincy’s cardinal rule.

  “Hello? Officer?” Her voice echoes through the house. “I need help. Please…”

  The detective had repeatedly cautioned her not to acknowledge the protective presence.You never know whether the culprit is in earshot, Mrs. Saddler, and you don’t want to scare her off.

  Her,Quincy said. As inRachel .

  Brynn promised she’d keep quiet.

  But she didn’t know then that her unborn baby’s life would be in more immediate jeopardy than theirs together.

  The hidden cop doesn’t respond.

  “Please,” Brynn calls desperately, clinging to the railing as she heads down the steep flight back to the first floor. “Please, help me. I’m bleeding.”

  At the foot of the stairs, she stops short, spotting something out of the corner of her eye.

  Something she didn’t notice on her way up.

  Something that sends ice flowing through her veins and drops her mouth open, poised to—

  No.

  Don’t scream.

  She closes her mouth…

  Why?

  Because you’re afraid no one will hear?

  Or because you’re afraid someone might?

  Heart racing, she stares mutely at the floor just in front of the closet door beneath the stairs, where an ominous dark stain taints the pine plank floor.

  Ashley looked so small and defenseless as she walked away alone, into the familiar yellow-brick school building. She was trying so hard to be brave, but her shoulders were shaking.

  She has more guts than you ever gave her credit for.

  Maybe more guts than you have yourself.

  She brakes at theSTOP sign a block from Saint Vincent’s, then resumes driving, careful to stay within the posted school zone limit. All she needs now is to be pulled over.

  No, that can’t happen.

  There’s something she has to do.

  It came up incidentally, as she and Ashley ate their pancakes and chatted over breakfast at that diner.

  Ashley caught a glimpse of her thick silver bracelet falling from beneath her sleeve, and mentioned that her mother always liked to wear gold jewelry.

  “She only had one silver thing in her jewelry box,” Ashley said. “A really pretty bracelet that was like a link of rosebuds.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw it once when I was snooping around, trying on some of her stuff,” Ashley admitted with a guilty expression. “But then I heard my mother coming so I put it back and got out of there.”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded. All girls try on their mom’s jewelry. Your mother and I always did, when we were young. My father used to buy her costume jewelry for every occasion, and she never wore any of it. She just let it pile up in her jewelry box.”

  “Well, I think my father must have given the silver bracelet to her, and she never wore it, but she kept it. I used to think it meant she still loved him and they were going to get back together again, but now I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Ash…” She shook her head. “Your father didn’t give it to her. That was her sorority bracelet.”

  “No, I don’t think so, Aunt Dee. I’m pretty sure it was a Ralph Lauren bracelet, from my dad.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Ashley told her.

  And the ugly germ of an idea sparked in her brain.

  It can’t be…

  No. There’s no way.

  Ashley must be mistaken.

  But there’s only one way to know for sure.

  Brynn’s heart is pounding as she stares at the dark splotch on the floor.

  It almost looks as though something seeped under the door.

  Something.

  Blood.

  No. You’re being ridiculous.

  The spot is dry, soaked into the wood; she can see that without touching it. It’s probably just an exceptionally large knot in the pine.

  Or perhaps whoever finished the floor splashed paint there, or dark-colored stain.

  Or it’s blood.

  “Officer,” Brynn calls again, taking a step back from the closet door, her voice tremulous. “Please…Where are you?”

  But her invisible protector remains stubbornly silent; the only sound is the rain pattering on the porch roof, pinging into the metal gutters.