“She doesn’t want her boss to know. He’s a freak about it. She’s scared. I said we’d do it.”

Kendall hesitated a minute. “When?”

“Tonight. That pervert said he’d call her tonight.”

April 13, 8 p.m.

Key Peninsula , Washington

As she prepared herself for an evening with her husband, Melody Castile climbed into the shower and let the water run over her body. She set aside a pink plastic razor and some shaving foam and spread her legs. While Sam called for her to hurry, she went about the business of shaving her most private areas.

Although, she knew, there was no privacy whatsoever.

It had started with small things.

Melody wore her hair shoulder length when she and Sam Castile first met. He complimented her on the color and style, saying that he’d never seen a woman’s hair with such a sheen.

“Like the sun is shining through you.”

Three months into their relationship, Melody decided to surprise him with a new look. She had her hair shorn. She thought the haircut was stylish, sophisticated.

Sam hit her. Hard. “You’re stupid, Melody. You looked so sexy and hot before. Now you look like some boring chick from Bremerton. Pop out some kids, get fat, and be nothing.”

His words hurt, and she never cut her hair again.

Six months into their relationship, Sam asked her to drop the rest of her life and move in with him. He’d bought some property down on the Key Peninsula and was going to build a house. They’d live in a travel trailer down there, with no running water, no cell phone service, and no power.

Melody told her family about it, making it sound as though she and Sam were going to be living off the land as they built their dream house.

“He wants to use the actual logs on the property. Isn’t that cool?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

Serenity, still at home, caught the disapproving looks of her parents. No one really liked Sam or thought that he was a good match for Melody. Even before they married a full year later, the couple had completely fallen off the family grid. When Serenity was still in junior high, she and her parents drove out to the peninsula to see the new house. They waited in the unfinished living room on lawn furniture for about a half an hour before Melody emerged from the back bedroom. She was so pale and thin that her mother gasped.

“Honey,” she said, “are you all right?”

Melody looked at Sam. “I’m fine. Just tired. It’s a lot of work to get this place in order. We barely have time to eat and catch our breath around here.”

A moment later Sam started the tour, pointing out all that he’d done and chiding his bride for being “Miss Lazy” and not doing enough to help. Melody laughed it off, but Serenity thought that there was no real laughter behind her eyes.

The bedroom was dominated by an enormous four-poster made of alder logs that had been peeled and oiled to a tawny sheen. A stuffed grouse fluttered in a corner; a deer head hung over the back window-trophies testifying to a man’s hobby. Serenity caught her mother’s eyes riveted to the headboard where two large steel hooks had been sunk into the wood and oily leather straps dangled. Everyone noticed the hooks, but no one remarked on them.

After the tour, Melody served ice tea and sandwiches. The conversation was a bit strained, and then at exactly 2 P.M. she stood up and thanked everyone for coming.

“I have chores to do now. So you’ll all have to go.”

“We’ve only been here an hour,” her mother said.

“And we’ve enjoyed every minute,” Sam said. “But Mel’s right. We’ve got things to do, and we have to get them done.”

Serenity went to embrace her sister good-bye, but Melody pulled back slightly. She’d never been much of a hugger, but it was a cold reaction that seemed in keeping with this strange afternoon visit.

“Something’s going on there,” she said in the car as they began driving home.

“The only question I have,” her mother said, “is why in the world anyone would want to live all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. It seems so remote.”

Her husband leaned his head out the window as he backed up, not wanting to hit a pile of lumber crowding the dirt driveway.

“Bingo. You’ve got the reason.”

For the next two nights, Kendall, Josh, and a tech named Porter Jones showed up in Serenity’s Mariner’s Glen apartment. They’d set up a feed that ran the phone through a listening and recording device. Of course, a tap could have been set up off location, but that would require a judge and there’d be a lot more heat about “freedom” of the press. Serenity didn’t seem to care about that right then. While she wanted to advance her career, she wanted to prove that the voice she was hearing was not some kook, but the voice of a killer.

A telemarketer called twice.

Josh looked at her. “You know, you can get on a ‘do not call’ list.”

“Thanks for the tip,” she said.

“Serenity,” Kendall said, “are you sure you’re getting calls on this line?”

Serenity’s eyes went cold. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s what she says,” Josh cut in.

Kendall let out a sigh, but held her tongue. It was interesting that Serenity would have some new blog post or article just about every other day. Where was her source? Why hadn’t he called?

If he was real at all.

Kendall got up to take a break from the huddle around the dinette table. She stepped over the sleeping tabby cat, Mr. Smith, through the living room to the apartment’s sole bathroom. Next to the sink, she noticed an open shaving kit. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Serenity Hutchins probably had a boyfriend.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone,” Kendall said. “The shaving kit.”

Serenity barely looked at her.

“That’s my dad’s,” she said. “He stayed over last week.”

April 18, 11:15 a.m.

Port Orchard

It was a crystalline morning without the fog that had coated Sunnyslope for the past several days. Certainly the mist burned off by the early afternoon, but for morning people like Trevor Jones, the muslin shroud over the woods was a complete and undeniable downer. He longed for his home in the Midwest, where most mornings-no matter the season-started with a sky patched with blue. It seemed that when it wasn’t raining in the Northwest, it was foggy. At least on his days off. He threw a leg over his mountain bike, called for his Labrador, Cindy, and went for a ride. He thought he’d pedal through Sunnyslope, toward the Bremerton Airport, then maybe as far as Belfair, a town along the southern shores of Hood Canal. Cindy would see him only as far as the end of the driveway: The invisible fencing collar that she wore had reminded her that, as much as she’d like to go with Trevor, she had to stop.

“Sorry about the force field, Cindy!” Trevor said as he spun out toward the road.

The dog looked forlornly at him and then turned around.

“Good girl!”

Trevor had twenty bucks in his wallet, a bottle of water, and the conviction that at twenty-nine he was still allowed to take the time for a Saturday ride. He put in long hours in the metal shop at the shipyard, and outside of tipping back a few beers on Friday nights and video games during the week, this was the extent of his fun. His wife, Crystal, was back in their tidy home, sewing a top that she intended to wear to a luncheon at the Central Kitsap School District office, where she worked as an aide.

Trevor pedaled toward the entrance to the woods, then turned down a pathway that looped through part of the forest before joining the road near the airport. His heart was pumping as he went up a little rise, his wheels cutting into the coffee-black soil, his iPod on shuffle mode. He stopped to catch his breath at the top of the rise and took a drink of water. A breeze fanned the beads of sweat on his face.