And then, somewhere in the house, two doors slammed one after the other—bam, BAM—like gunshots going off in some random corner, in some random room.

The envelope fell from his trembling hands, pictures spilling out once more.

He shot up, tried to regain his balance, stood stick-straight without taking a single step as his head spun. He would have run, would have launched himself up the stairs to make sure Jeanie was all right, but the duo of jarring slams was accompanied by voices . . . multiple voices. The girls he swore he had heard laughing from the shadows of the kitchen were back, now joined by the low murmur of men.

Lucas’s heart felt like a helium balloon, bumping up against his tonsils. Adrenaline spiked his blood, intensifying his queasiness. His vision blurred—no, wait. It wasn’t his eyesight. The walls were buzzing like tuning forks.

What the fuck is happening?

He turned around, shot a look at his corkboard.

If it’s still there, he thought, then I’m still here.

The corkboard was exactly where it should have been, but the voices didn’t cease.

Lucas dared to move away from his desk and toward the door, shocked by the weight of his legs. Walking felt like wading through a vat of something thick, viscous. It was as though time had slowed, but his thoughts continued to roll out as fast as ever.

It felt like hours before he finally reached the door. It took another day to press his ear to the wood and listen—a pointless childhood reflex, because by the time he reached his destination, the voices were so loud they were booming in his ears.

He hesitated, afraid to see what was beyond the door. Because what if his doubts about Echo were right? What if, like an idiot, he had invited her into his home and she in turn had let the people from the orchard into his living room? Someone was out there other than Echo and Jeanie. There was no room for doubt.

Lucas squeezed the doorknob in the palm of his hand, willing it to open without having to turn it himself. A burst of laughter rumbled through the walls, as if someone was amused by his wishful thinking, of his wanting to take action without moving his feet.

He yanked the door open wide, ready to scream at whoever was out there, prepared to demand they explain themselves before he called the cops.

What the fuck are you doing in my house?!

Your house? Oh no, Lucas, that’s where you’re very much mistaken.

The chorus of voices stopped—a party disturbed by an uninvited guest.

The room was dark, just as he’d left it. Upstairs, the hallway light was on, but from where he stood, he could see Jeanie’s door was shut. It had slammed shut minutes—or had it been hours?—before. Virginia’s name ran across his tongue. He sucked in air, ready to yell up to her, to make sure she was all right. But his eyes adjusted to the dark faster than he could form the three syllables that made up her proper name. His shout was stillborn. Silent.

Because what was happening was impossible.

It was impossible.

The living room wasn’t theirs.

In the moonlight, he could make out furniture he’d never seen before.

The flat screen was gone, replaced by an old boxed-in RCA monitor.

The overstuffed leather sofa was now a stiff-backed brown-and-orange plaid pullout.

Macramé hung where family photographs should have been.

He stepped out of his study and into a house that didn’t exist, nearly stumbled when his feet caught on the thick shag that hadn’t been there before. The air smelled of patchouli and weed and melted wax and the faint scent of pine.

And there, in a particularly dark corner, was a figure standing statuesque. A tall, gaunt man with skin pale enough to shine through the shadows. A man with wavy dark hair. Piercing eyes. A disarming smile that slowly curled up at the corners.

Up.

Up into a wide, nefarious grin.

Lucas stumbled backward, nearly falling into his study before slamming the door.

It’s him.

His pulse vibrated the plates of his skull.

It’s fucking him.

Every second that passed was one closer to the insane realization he already knew.

“How?” he whispered, but he knew that, too. It hadn’t been a trick or a ploy or a schizophrenic delusion.

One hundred and fifty miles away, Jeffrey Halcomb’s corpse was cooling on a gurney. But here in Pier Pointe, despite the impossibility, he was alive and well. He had found his way back to the coast. He had returned to the house he had been pulled from, had returned to the house where . . .

Lucas’s gaze jumped back to the corkboard, all those faces staring out at him, smiling wider than he remembered, grinning at him, as though they’d been waiting for this very moment of epiphany.

His guts seemed to shift, rearranging themselves so that it was harder to breathe, to think, to stand up straight. Lucas couldn’t decide whether to jump out the window or rush out of his study armed with his empty coffeepot, swinging it like a wild man as he bolted for the stairs to get his kid.

Lucas shot his arm out across the varnished top of his desk, reached for his phone, missed. The device bounced off the side of his hand and skittered along the desk, landing among the pile of photographs and newspaper clippings with a soft thump. He crawled across the floor in a rush, his palms and knees hitting the ground hard as he shimmied to the opposite end of his desk. The phone was there, close to the wall outlet and the electrical cord that kept his laptop and coffeemaker powered up. He snatched the phone off the floor and pressed his back against the wall, thumbed the lock screen, and tapped the phone icon.

Josh’s text glowed bright against the home screen.

See you soon? J.

Lucas remembered having cleared it before placing another call to the police.

See you soon?

But there it was, taunting him.

 . . . soon?

J for Josh. For January. For Jeffrey. For . . .

Jeanie.

The phone tumbled from Lucas’s hand. He wiped his palm against the fabric of his pants, as if touching the phone would permanently infect him with the terrified madness he was already feeling. He had to get upstairs. Had to get to his daughter. Had to make sure she was okay. It didn’t matter how scared he was.

He made to scramble to his feet, but again, his movements hitched in sudden pause. His lips parted in a quiet intake of air as a new photo winked up at him from among the pile he’d studied so closely. In it, Jeffrey Halcomb stood in the front yard with Congressman Snow’s house to his back. One arm was looped around a brunette’s shoulders, her long hair hanging around her face like silken drapes. His other arm was around Audra. Lucas narrowed his eyes and plucked the photo off the floor, bringing it in closer to his face to study the dark-haired woman. At first it had looked like Georgia, but something about her face was wrong.

That was when he saw it, that large ornate cross given to Lucas at the prison. The cross he’d shoved into one of his desk drawers, too frustrated with a lack of answers to keep it in sight. The artifact was half-hidden behind the lapel of the woman’s shirt. Lucas brought the photo in even closer, squinting at the decoration that looked hand-painted and too big to wear.

He flipped the photo over.

Eloise, Jeff, and Jeanie.

His entire body went numb.

Lucas dropped the photo as quickly as he’d have dropped a lit match lapping at his fingers. It landed faceup. Jeff’s grin was now wider than before, beaming in malicious triumph. Echo smiled out at him, the cross around her neck winking in the sun. But he hardly noticed the change in Echo and Jeff, his eyes currently fixed on Audra’s face, her stick-straight hair now a halo of loose blond curls, her plain-Jane looks replaced by his daughter’s face. His girl. His Virginia.