Then I look down. I see the boy. A flash of smile. A quick wave. He quickly tucks his hand behind his back, glancing around self-consciously. But I don’t put my hand down. I keep it pressed against the window. I imagine, just for one moment, that I’m standing on the lawn with him. He’s still smiling at me and I’m not so scared or lonely anymore.

Thomas was right: We hadn’t been allowed to mingle or interact. But in his own way, he had become my lifeline, a point of interest in an otherwise monotonous existence of sitting in a gilded cage, waiting for nightfall. Madame Sade called the shots: First she isolated us in this mansion; then she extolled her own virtues. Look at this fancy house where I brought you to live; look at this new dress I found just for you. Aren’t you so lucky to have me to take care of you, so fortunate to have this opportunity to get ahead in life.

She’d flash that cold smile, the one that never reached her eyes, and the smart girl did as she was told. The smart girl didn’t dream of life beyond these walls.

Or Madame Sade would take away your food, shred your clothes, slash one of your new toys, maybe the one she’d just given you the day before. She’d twist your arm behind your back, so hard you could barely breathe, and she’d remind you of everything she’d bought and paid for. Oh yes, including you. So you’d better wise up, shut up and entertain that man over there, because it wasn’t like anyone would miss you if you didn’t show up one morning for breakfast. Lots of things disappeared in these deep, dark woods. Including ungrateful little girls.

I wised up. I shut up. I entertained that man over there.

But I also watched the boy out mowing the lawns. I studied him from beneath my lashes as he strode across the grounds. I caught his eye from time to time, as we passed in the hall.

Vero had the magical queen and the lost princess from the secret realm.

I had entire fictional conversations with a young boy I’d never officially met. Until, of course, I lost my place in the tower bedroom.

Now I look back at the sky, to the blank space on the horizon where there had once been the three-story turret. She’s close, I think. Very close. No longer just a presence in my mind, but here in these overgrown ruins.

“Vero took my room,” I hear myself say. “She arrived, and I was booted downstairs.”

Thomas doesn’t say anything.

“I hated her for that. I didn’t have to. I could’ve felt bad for her. She was so young, just this poor little girl torn from her family. I could hear crying night after night, you know. But I didn’t feel any pity. I hated her instead.”

“Divide and conquer,” Thomas provides gently. “My mother was no dummy.”

I can’t look up anymore. I smell smoke, and what’s going to happen next . . . The real reason Thomas brought me here.

“I just wanted my room back,” I murmur now. An apology? To him, to her, I don’t know. “I wanted to pretend to be a princess. Because of course, I knew by then, I was nothing but a whore.”

Thomas steps in front of me.

“It’s not your fault. Don’t you understand? That’s why you need to remember, Nicky. Because in forgetting what happened, you’re also forgetting the reason you’re not to blame.”

“No.” I shake my head, then force myself to look at him, take a steadying breath. “You don’t understand. Vero is my fault. I’m the one who killed her. From the first moment I started hiding the drugs, I knew she’d find them. I knew she’d take them. Worse, I loved her. By then she had become the little sister I’d never had, the closest thing to a best friend. She was family. My only family. And I killed her. Consciously, deliberately. I let her die, so I could live.”

Thomas studies me. He stares and he stares. Then he says the most curious thing. He says: “And then what, Nicky? Vero took the drugs. But what happened next?”

Chapter 38

NO CELL RECEPTION,” Tessa reported, holding her phone closer to the passenger window, as if that might help. “Damn mountains.”

“Do you know where we are?” Wyatt asked her. Because it felt to him like they’d already been driving forever, and Tessa had a point. So far, all he saw was dark, endless mountains.

“No, only where we’ve been.”

“Gotta be getting close.”

“Can I just say one thing? This road alone proves one of our theories. We’ve been driving forever without even a bear for company. If this is truly the location of the infamous dollhouse . . . no way Nicky Frank magically crawled off the grounds and hitched a ride to New Orleans all by her lonesome. She had to have help.”

“Thomas isn’t just her husband; he was her getaway,” Wyatt agreed.

“Interesting basis for a marriage.”

“And yet they’ve lasted twenty-two years.”

“Until the past six months,” Tessa grumbled. “When Nicky decided she wanted the truth about her past and immediately became expendable.”

Wyatt didn’t comment right away. He’d been the first to doubt Thomas. Any man whose wife had mysteriously suffered three accidents. Let alone that Nicky herself had placed him at the scene of the car accident. And yet, the video. Something about the video. The way Nicky still walked right up to him, placed her hand in his own.

Fear and love.

Wyatt was making an investigator’s worst mistake and he knew it: He was contemplating two suspects, Nicky and Thomas Frank, and seeing himself and Tessa.

“Come on,” Tessa prodded him now. “You’re telling me you’re suddenly a fan of Thomas Frank? At the very least, he met his distraught wife Wednesday night, handed her a pair of fake fingerprint gloves, then seat-belted her into her vehicle before pushing it down a ravine. Hardly the actions of an innocent man.”

“Fan would be a big statement. Just gotta say, for the record, the vehicle in question was a new Audi Q5 with airbag this and safety feature that. Hardly a death trap. Plus, he put on her seat belt.”

“Better to cover his tracks, make it look like an accident.”

“Nicky was already drunk. She’d done that on her own. An investigating officer wouldn’t have questioned the lack of seat belt.”

“He’s not an investigating officer.”

“True. It’s just that . . .”

She stared at him. “Spit it out.”

“I don’t know. The cop in me agrees with you. Clearly here’s a man with plenty to hide. And yet, two decades of marriage later . . . You said it yourself. Just because he saved her that night didn’t mean he had to marry her. And even if his job was to somehow keep tabs on her, watch her for Madame Sade. Twenty-two years later, how do you fake that kind of relationship? I don’t know. I watched that video tonight, and . . . There’s something there, some kind of dynamic we don’t understand yet.”

“You’re a romantic,” Tessa informed him.

“I prefer the term open-minded.”

“The picture she drew of him. Thomas was at the dollhouse. The expression she sketched on his face. Thomas was not a happy kid. Meaning he was definitely part of what was going on back then. Nicky starts to remember everything, those memories put him at risk.”

“He would’ve been young himself. Possibly a victim as well.”

“The look in his eyes was hard.”

“I thought he looked determined.”

“Wyatt!”

“Tessa!

“You know I love you, right?” he said abruptly.

In the passenger’s seat, Tessa stilled. He could tell his words had caught her off guard, and yet they hadn’t. Love and fear, he thought again. Except not Nicky and Thomas’s, but their own.

“I’m not good at this,” Tessa murmured.

“Tessa, what’s wrong?”

“Can’t we just . . . solve this case? You like arresting people; I like arresting people. We’ll be fine.”

“Is it Sophie?” he asked steadily. “Because I can be patient, Tessa. I know she hasn’t fully accepted me yet. That’s okay. I’m in this for the long haul.”