“We can’t let her go, Michael!”

“Oh my God, Julia. What have you done?”

“She had Penny’s computer. They were friends. She knows everything!”

The voices brought Brittany’s consciousness rising to the surface like a leaf floating up from the depths of black water. The pain in her face and her head was so terrible, she couldn’t even feel the rest of her body. Blood pooled in her mouth. She could feel chips of broken teeth against her tongue. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t open her mouth, couldn’t seem to form sound.

“Oh my God.” The man’s voice was strained, frightened. “What are we going to do? Look what you’ve done, Julia!”

“But I had to. Don’t you see that? If Penny told her. If she wrote about it on her computer . . . I had to, Michael. To save us.”

“Us,” the man said, incredulous. “Oh my God.”

“You have to help me,” she said. She sounded almost childish.

“We can’t do this, Julia,” he said. “I helped you with Penny. I had to. I know you didn’t mean for that to happen. That was— That was a—a tragedy. She was your daughter. She pushed you to it. You snapped. I understand that. I understand why. But this? This is murder.”

“And it’s your fault,” Julia said bitterly. “You know it’s your fault. You slept with my daughter!”

“One time! It happened one time!” he said. “I made a mistake. I told her it could never happen again.”

“She would have ruined you! She would have ruined us! You thought you could buy her off with a car? She would have held that over our heads for the rest of our lives!”

Brittany tried to move—just her fingertips, just her toes. She lay on the floor. She opened her eyes to the narrowest of slits. She could see tile, a piece of a rug, the tip of a shoe.

As she slowly became aware of her body, she became aware of lying on something, something pressing into her stomach. It vibrated against her. Her phone.

She lay with one arm outstretched, the other half beneath her. If she could get to the phone . . .

“Penny was an accident,” Michael Warner said. “You acted in the heat of the moment. This is murder, Julia! I can’t help you kill an innocent girl!”

“Then what are we supposed to do, Michael? She’ll ruin our lives! We can’t let her go now!”

There was a long silence. He moved, walked away. Brittany could hear him pacing.

She tried to lift her belly from the floor, to slip her hand into the pouch on her sweater.

“If we take her to the lake house,” Dr. Warner said quietly. “We can put her in Penny’s car . . . and run the car into the lake. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying this! This is insane!”

“We don’t have a choice!” Julia whined.

“No,” he murmured, “we don’t. God help us.”

50

“We were going to go together,” Kyle said. “To give Mrs. Gray our condolences, you know, tell her we’re sorry about what happened to Gray. Then you asked me not to,” he said, looking at his mother. “But I should have gone with her anyway. I could have just walked her over there. She had some stuff of Gray’s. She wanted to take it back. Clothes and stuff Gray left at her house.”

“Clothes and what stuff?” Sam Kovac asked.

Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. Makeup. Her laptop. Stuff.”

Kovac swore under his breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “Brittany has had Gray’s computer all this time?”

“I guess.”

Kovac looked at Kyle’s mom. “That first night we talked to her, Brittany told us Gray had stayed a couple of days and then left. We just assumed she took her stuff with her. Her mother said she carried her computer with her everywhere. If she left Brittany’s house, why wouldn’t she take her stuff with her? We assumed the laptop was with her, in her car or that whoever killed her took it. It never occurred to me—”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Nikki said.

She was punching a number into her cell phone. Her hands were trembling. Watching her, Kyle felt more nervous and more nervous. She pressed the phone to her ear, avoiding eye contact with him and turning toward Sam.

“She’s not answering,” she said.

Kovac got off his stool.

“What’s wrong?” Kyle asked. “Who’s not answering? Britt?”

“Sam and I will drive over and make sure Brittany gets home.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kyle said.

“No. You stay here with R.J.”

“He can stay with Marysue. I want to come—”

“I said no,” his mother said in a tone of voice that meant he shouldn’t ask again.

Kyle followed them into the hall. Sam was shrugging into his coat.

“But, Mom—”

“Stay here with you brother,” she said, grabbing her coat from the hall closet. “I’ll call you.”

51

She should have been dead. After everything he had put her through, she should have died hours before. He had done things to her she could never have imagined, would never have wanted to know one human being could be capable of doing to another. She had tried to resist the overwhelming desire to break down mentally but had learned resistance was rewarded only with pain. The pain had been like nothing in her most terrible nightmares. It had surpassed adjectives and gone into a realm of blinding white light and high-pitched sound. There were no words. She had ceased to fight and had found that in seemingly giving up her life, she was able to keep her life.

Where there is life there is hope.

She couldn’t remember where she had heard that. Somewhere long ago. Childhood.

Where there is life there is hope.

Those words had played through her head over and over. They played through her head now as she lay there on the floor of the van. Where there is life there is hope.

She was more alive than he knew. In giving up, she had reserved strength. She had stopped him short of rendering her completely incapacitated. She could still move. She could still think.

The cold floor beneath her was numbing the pain. The blanket thrown over her offered a cocoon, a place to be invisible. Her wrists were only loosely bound together in front of her with a red ribbon, her elbows bent, her hands tucked beneath her chin as if in prayer.

Prayer. She had prayed and prayed and prayed.

No one had come to save her. And yet, she should have been dead, but she wasn’t.

He was singing in the front seat, happy, elated, proud.

She was his masterpiece.

She was alive.

She moved her hands and felt the ribbon loosen.

Where there is life there is hope. Where there is life there is hope. . . .

The van hit a pothole, jolting her world, rocking her violently side to side. And next to her the collection of tools he had brought bounced and rattled in their open tote.

Where there is life there is hope. . . .

•   •   •

FITZ WAS EUPHORIC. High as a frigging kite. He didn’t even bother to curse this wretched pockmarked stretch of road that was going to ruin his wheel alignment by the time they arrived at their destination. It didn’t matter. Nothing could spoil his mood. He turned the radio up and sang along.

He had chosen his perfect spot , the perfect stage for his show. Fucking genius, that’s what it was. Every major news outlet in the country would be flocking to Minneapolis to cover the story. He would be the subject of a Dateline NBC special.

He had chosen the Loring Park sculpture garden for the setting of what would be his most famous tableau. Amid the huge and whimsical works of art he would present his masterpiece, wrapped in a beautiful bow no less.