“What the hell is going on?” she mutters, sinking onto the edge of the bed and burying her face in her hands.
Between her splayed fingers, she notices something poking out from under the bed. She bends over and pulls out a flat metal box. It looks old and dusty, shedding dirt crumbs all over the floor where even dust bunnies aren’t allowed to linger.
Stacey drops to her knees and lifts the lid.
The first thing she sees is a spiral-bound photo album. She lifts it out and is about to open it when something else catches her eye.
Money.
More money than she’s ever seen in her life. Stacks and stacks of cash.
What in the world . . . ?
Her heart rages against her ribs.
Brass candlesticks. An old, embroidered strip of fabric. A man’s gold watch. A woman’s sapphire necklace. A key. A baby ring engraved with the initial A.
A manila envelope. Opening it, she finds a pair of black-and-white photocopied driver’s licenses. Both are from Arizona, issued in the 1980s, to a couple named Stanislav and Magdalena Shehu.
She recognizes them from the newspaper archive photos she’d seen about the triple homicide.
Stanley and Lena Toska.
Pulse racing, Stacey seizes the photo album and opens it.
A chubby baby smiles back at her. She has black curls, enormous eyes fringed with thick lashes, and a rosebud mouth. She’s familiar. So familiar that Stacey feels as though someone is standing on her chest, squeezing the air out of her lungs. The baby looks familiar, because . . .
That’s me.
Jacob
Jacob gapes at the woman standing before him in the relentless downpour. He can’t see her face and she’s cloaked in black like a specter. But the moment he hears the familiar cadence of his name on her lips, he confirms that it’s her.
She’s panting as if she’s been running.
If she’s breathing, then she must be alive.
So it’s true, then. He’s not crazy. She really has moved back into her house.
But . . .
But he must be crazy because she can’t be alive because she’s dead.
He saw her lying in a blood-spattered room with a gaping hole ripped in the back of her head, and even if someone could survive that, Anna hadn’t, because . . .
Because he’d seen her corpse and he’d seen her body carried out of the house and he’d seen them burying her, and he’d read police reports and morgue reports . . .
What the hell? What the hell is going on?
Anna can’t be alive.
Yet she isn’t dead.
Jacob must be crazy.
Yet he isn’t crazy.
He steps toward her.
She steps back.
“Wait!” he says. “I . . . I want you to know . . . I wanted to take you away, get you out of there. I wanted to warn you that you were in danger. That my father, my family, wanted me to—”
“I know.”
Then, in a voice that’s soft, hoarse, deeper than he remembers, she utters the sentence that demolishes everything he’d ever presumed about her. About their relationship. “I always knew exactly what you were, Jacob.”
“You . . . knew . . . what?”
“Did you think I was stupid? That I didn’t realize they’d sent you, and you were watching me? I was aware of everything and everyone around me at every moment. I had to be. Do you think I ever let my guard down for one second, living in that house with that horrible man who was going to get us all killed? With that crazy woman who hurt me from the time I was a little girl, who tried to—”
“She hurt you! I didn’t. I only wanted to help you, and you . . . you told me you loved me.”
“Yes. That’s what I told you.”
“But . . . why? Why did you let me . . . why didn’t you stay away from me?”
“Because . . . you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
“I wasn’t your enemy. I was trying to help you.”
“You were trying to kill me.”
“No!” He has to make her understand. Why won’t she understand? “I’m the one who . . . I was going to save you, but I got there too late.”
The words land in a pause so profound that even the rain seems to cease falling.
Then she speaks, slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“That night . . . the night she . . . I saw you. All of you.”
“You saw . . . what?”
“I saw what she did,” he whispers.
He closes his eyes, and it’s all there, always there—the bodies, the blood . . .
“You saw . . . you were there?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying, Jacob.”
“No! I was there!”
He needs her to believe him. He needs not just her forgiveness for what he’d done, but also her understanding that he hadn’t been responsible for her fate. That in the end, he’d meant to be her savior, not her executioner.
“I was there, but it was too late. I was too late to stop her.”
She flinches, but stands her ground, shoulders hunched, hands thrust deep into her pockets, as if she’s cold.
Can ghosts feel cold?
Aren’t ghosts inherently cold?
He’s cold, so cold his teeth chatter around his words. “You didn’t deserve what she did to you.”
He sees her glance over one shoulder and then the other, edgy. He can’t let her go. Not yet. He reaches for her arm.
She moves back. “Don’t touch me!”
“You don’t have to be afraid. Not of me. Only of her. I tried . . . but I couldn’t find her afterward. Maybe she ran away. Or maybe . . . maybe she couldn’t live with herself after what she did. Maybe in the end she was just another anonymous dead derelict in the park.”
She says nothing, but again her head turns, as if to see if anyone is in range.
Not a soul. They’re alone out here. Alone at last.
“I’ll make this right, I swear to you,” he promises.
“What . . . what do you mean?”
“Why do you think I kept coming back to Glover Street? A killer always returns to the scene of a crime, remember? I was waiting for her.”
“You were waiting . . . you’ve been watching the house, watching her. With binoculars.”
“Yes. And I thought . . .”
He pauses, seeing her take her hand out of her pocket. It isn’t transparent even though she’s a ghost. She extends it.
He reaches for her, aching to hold her. “I’m going to make it right. I’m going to kill—”
Too late, he sees the glint of something solid and metallic in her hand, an instant before his body explodes in agony on his last word.
“—Ellie.”
Nora
The suppressor muffles the shot. Close range, in Jacob’s chest.
Her hand trembles as she tucks the gun back into the deep pocket of Stacey’s coat, alongside the wad of cash. Just in case, she’d told herself, when she’d taken the money and the gun, leaving behind her phone, and her wallet. Just in case . . .
When Stacey had shown her those texts, she’d realized that the person who’d sent it, the person on the shed roof, the person waiting in the park, was not Lennon.
Lennon didn’t have his phone.
Earlier, when she and Jules were in the cab heading home, Jules had received yet another call from an unknown number. That time, thinking it might be important, she’d finally picked it up. It was her son on a borrowed phone, saying that he’d lost his while he and Stacey were in the park.