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“We need to get further away,” Robbie says.
“I’m trying.”
Charlie keeps the car moving, rounding the circular drive in front of the lodge and heading toward the twisting road that will take them to the bottom of the waterfall. After that, Charlie has no idea where to go.
“I don’t know where we are.”
She hits the brakes again, puts the car in park, and reaches for the glove compartment in front of Robbie, searching for a map. The glove compartment door drops open, and a small box tumbles out, almost landing in Robbie’s lap.
He tries to catch it but is slowed by his gunshot wound. That leaves Charlie to grab it and pull it toward her.
It’s a jewelry box.
Black.
Hinged.
Big enough for a single engagement ring.
Heat spreads in Charlie’s chest. She’d suspected, back in the recesses of her mind, that Robbie might try to propose before she left. When he didn’t, she was more relieved than disappointed. Guilty and depressed and lost in her own world, she wasn’t ready for such a commitment.
But now—after this long, horrible night—Charlie wonders if she might have been wrong about that.
“Robbie, I—”
“Wait!” he says.
But Charlie’s already opening the box, excitement blooming in spite of herself, the hinge sounding out a light creak as she lifts the lid and things start rolling out of it like dice. That’s what Charlie thinks they are as she cups her hand to catch them.
Dice.
Three startlingly small dice the color of ivory.
It’s not until they’re rattling in her palm that she understands what they really are.
Teeth.
Angela Dunleavy’s tooth.
Taylor Morrison’s tooth.
Maddy’s tooth.
“Robbie, why do you have these?”
She knows the answer.
Robbie took them after killing Angela.
And Taylor.
And Maddy.
Staring at Robbie with her dead friend’s tooth still in her hand, Charlie feels something break loose inside her chest.
Her heart.
There’s now an empty space where it used to be. A void, inside of which the sound of her last heartbeat still echoes. Then it, too, is gone, and she feels nothing.