“What the hell are you talking about?”

“D-Day at P’s Place. You’re going to storm the beach tomorrow, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”

THE SUN WAS BARELY UP WHEN TESS AND WHITNEY left the Talbots’ dock the next morning. They were in the Boston Whaler, a motorboat that Whitney’s father had inexplicably christened the Hornswoggle II. Or maybe there was an explanation, but Tess had decided a long time ago it wasn’t worth pursuing. The Talbots specialized in detailed and obscure stories.

“I’m reasonably sure how to get there,” Whitney said, frowning at the nautical chart in her lap, as they moved slowly away from the dock.

“Only reasonably sure?” Tess repeated, waving in what she hoped was a reassuring way to Crow and Esskay as they disappeared from view. “I’m not happy about staying behind,” he had told her this morning, burrowed beneath the quilt on Mr. and Mrs. Talbot’s bed. “Someone has to watch Esskay,” Tess had countered. “Besides, you have your own part to play here, if everything goes as planned.”

This now seemed like a very large “if.”

Whitney was frowning at the great expanse of water before them. Above, seen from the twin spans of the Bay Bridge, the Chesapeake wasn’t quite so formidable. “I’ve figured out where we were last night and if I’m right, it backs to this inlet.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then we abort. Besides, we won’t do anything until we’re close enough to see the place. You know the cover story.”

“About that cover story-” Tess looked down at the gray water churning beneath them. She and Whitney had been out in this boat many times before, making fun of the mansions that the nouveau riche built along the bay’s shores. But that had been on sultry July and August days. She could almost smell those days-the sun, the water, the breeze, the suntan lotion-on the life jacket she had donned.

There was no sun today, and the wind felt like tiny knives pricking at her face and neck.

“The life jacket. It’s really just for show, right?”

“More or less. I’m going to try to get you close enough to wade in, but you never know. You’re a strong swimmer, right?”

“Pretty strong. But they have to have a doctor on the premises, right? And he’ll be bound by medical ethics to check me out for hypothermia.”

“I hope so,” Whitney said. “Then again, it would give us some leverage, wouldn’t it? A licensed treatment center without a doctor on call. I’m sure that’s not legal.”

Tess didn’t say anything, but she thought leverage was pretty inconsequential, once you were dead. She glanced at the sky. Overcast, yet Whitney swore there was no chance of rain. She wondered what would happen if she proposed switching places. But she could never find her way back to the Talbots’, and she wasn’t confident she could handle the boat alone, even under the best conditions.

Almost forty-five minutes had passed before Whitney steered the boat into a narrow channel, cut the motor, and let it drift. “Does this look like the place we saw last night?”

“We didn’t see anything but chain link and razor wire last night,” Tess said, squinting at the large white house sitting back from the shoreline. “But, yes, it could be the place.”

It was a rambling white Victorian, with pink trim. Someone’s old summerhouse, enlarged over the years in a random fashion. It clearly was no longer a vacation home. Persephone’s Place, if this was it, had an antiseptic look, a marked indifference to its surroundings that bordered on hostility. There was no dock, for example, and the glassed-in porch at the rear of the house was small, curtains drawn against the winter light, as if no one there ever dared to watch a sunset. The grounds were bare and open, with the bald, raw look more common to a spanking-new development. Yet the tall, spindly pine trees at the property’s edge had to be decades old. Even as it shut the rest of the world out, Tess realized, Persephone’s Place denied privacy to its residents. There was no place to hide here, no spot where one would be out of view.

“It does look like a wedding cake,” Whitney said. “Even the trim, all gingerbread and curlicues and rosettes. You feel you should be able to break off a piece and eat it. Just looking at it makes me vaguely nauseous, as if I’d been on a little binge.”

“Hansel and Gretel,” Tess said, remembering a scrap of Sukey’s conversation with Jane Doe. “The Sugar House.”

They were very close now, the boat passing under a tree whose branches bent so close to the water that they had to bow their heads. At the last minute, Whitney reached up and grabbed the branch, keeping the boat from drifting any closer to the fringe of sand and gravel that passed for a beach.

“Here,” she said. “This is as close as I go. Remember I have to putt-putt out very slowly, so make sure I’m out of the inlet before you draw attention to yourself.”

“Do I have to get all the way wet?” Tess asked. “Maybe if I just could climb out here, and walk along the shore-”

“All the way wet,” Whitney said firmly. “You have to give the impression that you could keel over at any moment. It’s the only thing that’s going to keep them from sending you straight to the sheriff’s office for trespassing. I hope.”

Tess sighed and kneeled on the starboard side of the boat. She tried to remember the jump she had learned as a lifeguard at Hunting Hills Swim Club years ago, with legs spread open, so the head didn’t submerge. At least, that had been the theory. She couldn’t recall if anyone had ever done it successfully.

“Go,” Whitney hissed. Did she actually lean over and push her? Tess had no memory of jumping, just a sensation of cold unlike anything she had ever known. Gasping for breath, dog-paddling because of the cumbersome life jacket, she made her way for shore. Behind her, she heard the Hornswoggle II pulling away, but she didn’t look back. There was no going back. She’d rather crawl to shore than climb back into the boat and skim across the bay in her sodden clothes. She had dressed in thin layers, unwilling to sacrifice her suede jacket to this enterprise. In fact, she had raided Mr. Talbot’s closet, availing herself of the soft, old fishing clothes he had amassed over years of coming to the shore. But they were shockingly heavy when wet, and her feet and hands already felt as if they were encased in concrete.

By the time Tess stumbled to the shore, she did not need particularly advanced acting skills to convey the fact that she was wet, chilled, and very glad to be alive.

Too bad there was no one there to appreciate her arrival. For it was not yet 7:30, according to her watch, and the Sugar House was quiet. She crawled slowly up the hill, finally pulling herself to her feet, and staggered toward the house.

It was only then that she noticed a girl looking at her from a small casement window on the third floor.

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne,” Tess breathed, thinking of the Bluebeard legend. “What do you see? What did you see?”

She studied the girl’s face, oddly dark and mottled, but that was probably a shadow from the lace curtain she had pushed aside. Her expression was curiously impassive, as if there were nothing unusual about a soaking wet woman weaving up the sloped lawn. Had she seen the boat enter the inlet, watched Whitney push her from the boat? When she caught Tess looking up at her, she quickly ducked out of sight.

Or perhaps she had left the window because of the two men in white uniforms rushing across the lawn toward Tess.

“What are you doing here?” one man asked her. “This is private property.”

“I-capsized,” Tess gasped, her teeth chattering helpfully.

“Where’s your boat?” the other asked.

“Sank. G-g-g-gone,” she said, waving a hand toward the bay, trusting Whitney was long gone now, not even a speck on the horizon. “All gone. Lucky to be alive.”