When he was gone, Witt sat with me at the table. He asked me straight out about the night I escaped from the island and whether I was lying about how it happened.
What I had told him was all true. During the time I was getting power over Rick, I had also been working on the other part of my plan inside the house. Lucy had her pills for sleeping and she kept them in her bathroom. I knew I would need to get to them. So I had been a very good girl. Happy to be with the Pratts. Happy that I had seen the mistake I had made in trying to leave. Eventually, they stopped watching me. They stopped worrying about me. They got distracted.
It’s hard to even remember how crazy I felt the night I managed to get to Lucy’s pills. Endless days of fear. Endless days of dreaming. Endless days of pretending and hating myself for any real feelings I had for anyone or anything in that wretched place, of looking out at the land so close but impossible to reach. And endless days having sex with a man I pretended to love but then had to shower off me.
The thought of being free overwhelmed me with happiness. The thought of getting caught overwhelmed me with fear. Waves of elation and dread rolled through my body like the ocean, each one crashing against a wall and giving way to the next.
Heart exploding, sweat dripping down my face from the fear and heat of that summer night, I sat on the couch with Bill, watching a movie. Lucy had gone to bed and we hadn’t seen or heard from her for half an hour. She had taken her pill. I brought Bill his glass of wine. I had dissolved the pill inside it. After a while, Bill said he didn’t feel so good. You aren’t supposed to mix the pills with alcohol. I told him maybe it was the heat. I told him I would get him some water and I went to the bathroom.
I waited a few minutes there. I waited until it was quiet. And as I opened the door, my mind was racing with horrible thoughts of Bill standing on the other side, his hands reaching for my bare throat to kill me because he’d tasted the pill and realized what I was doing. I almost cried out when I pulled that handle and could see behind the door, Bill on the couch, unconscious.
I let out a gasp, but then forced myself to move. Bill kept a cheap old cell phone in his pants pocket. He used it to message Rick when he needed the boat. I reached into his pocket and grabbed the phone. I sent the message and I knew Rick would come. Rick always came, day or night. So I took all the cash I could find from his wallet and the bedroom drawers where they kept it, and I went to the dock and waited until I could see the lights from inside the harbor.
TWENTY-TWO
Dr. Winter—Day Seven of Cass Tanner’s Return
They found the body of Richard Foley the next morning. It was lodged in the rocks on the westernmost point of the island of Freya. The cause of death appeared to be drowning because there was salt water in his lungs, but he also had contusions on his upper torso and a large gash on the back of his head. Wood splinters were found embedded in his skin.
They had not determined the exact time of death, but the extent of the decomposition was consistent with the time period between finding the boat and finding the body.
Abby and Leo did not change their plan to return to Connecticut. They took calls from the field office as they drove.
Theories were being spun about Cass and whether she had killed Richard Foley to escape: “It would explain why she lied about the timing … the two-day gap.… She killed him and then had to figure out what to do, how to get home.… She was never on a truck.…”
But others were willing to pin the death on the Pratts, who had now been identified as the Petersons: “They panicked, confronted him. Maybe he threatened to turn them in. A heated argument turned violent.”
Abby wanted to believe this as well, but Cass’s stories were impossible to ignore.
“What was it she said, Abby? About that first night when she got on the boat?”
Abby was thinking the same thing. “She said she knew it was dangerous to fall in the water between the boat and the dock. She said her father had told her years before how the boat can get pushed back and crush you against the dock.”
Leo hung his head. “Jesus.”
“Are you still okay with this?” Abby asked as they pulled into the Martins’ driveway.
Abby had a plan, a way to find Emma. But they would have to lie, both of them, and very well.
Leo didn’t hesitate. “Let’s do it.”
Cass
Day seven was the last day I kept track of my days back home. It was the day Dr. Winter told us that Emma had been found.
She told us as soon as she and Agent Strauss returned from Maine and the island of Freya, where they found my sister’s necklace but no sign of Emma or the Pratts.
I have such a clear picture of Dr. Winter from that afternoon. She was wearing jeans and a light blue T-shirt that matched the color of her eyes. The sun was shining through the window of the living room and through her blond hair, making it glow. But it also made her face appear dark and full of shadows from her nose and her cheekbones, and I had to remind myself that it was the backlighting from the sun that was causing this. Not me. Not the trust in me that was driving her disclosure of this news about Emma. I felt responsible for those things, and the weight of them nearly crushed me.
Dr. Winter said that they’d found the brother of Lucy Pratt, or Lorna Peterson, and he had been very cooperative. He told them his family had owned another piece of property, a small cabin farther north, near Acadia. They confirmed it with the will of their mother and tracked the conveyance deed. They had an address, and surveillance teams had made a positive ID. Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss told us that Emma and her daughter were inside that house. The Pratts as well.
I nearly burst open. I don’t even know what it was—joy, relief, nerves. They were surging together in a toxic potion, through my veins, through my body.
Agent Strauss was with Dr. Winter when she told us these things, and he said that we could not tell anyone, not even my father, because they did not want to spook the Pratts. They were going to do more surveillance to assess the situation, maybe for a day or two. They wanted to make sure there were no weapons in the house and observe where Emma and her daughter were sleeping at night. They had time. There didn’t appear to be any immediate danger, and the worst thing would be to rush in and have someone get hurt. They were telling me because they needed my help—they wanted me to interpret the things they were seeing, the behaviors and schedules, especially of her daughter. When did she nap? When did she bathe? They told Mr. and Mrs. Martin because that’s where I was staying and they wanted me to have emotional support. They told us we could not tell anyone else.