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F ootsteps. Floorboards creaking. Tinkling of metal on metal—

Emily opened her eyes.

—and the unmistakable clink of a key in a lock.

It took her brain a beat to slip the bonds of sleep and piece together where she was and what was happening. Lying fully dressed, on the couch in Bookmark, in the dark. She didn’t remember deciding to lie down, or even feeling sleepy. In fact, when she searched for the last few hours of her day, the results came back empty.

Why couldn’t she remember?

Flashes, from her afternoon. She’d come back here. She’d pulled down the blinds, checked the doors, packed her suitcase. She’d talked to Mark. She’d watched a few hours of mindless TV. She’d waited to hear voices in the courtyard, but it got to be four, five and then six in the evening and there was still no sign of Jack or Ben, and no Grace either. She’d started to wonder if Grace had already left. Around seven, she’d risked opening Bookmark’s front door. That was when she’d discovered a white paper bag outside: takeaway in cardboard cartons, and a bottle of wine. She’d figured Grace had left it for her. She’d felt anxious and wired and uneasy. She’d picked at the food, if only to silence her gurgling stomach. She’d thought a glass of wine was a good idea. She was right about the first one, so she’d had another.

And then …

Nothing else.

Drinking the wine was the last thing she remembered, until she’d heard noises.

Emily jerked upright, into a sitting position. What little light there was had an odd quality to it, like a sunrise over snow.

She thought, Jack. Jack has got in .

But then she saw a shadow move on the other side of the glass in the front door: a tall figure, bent at the waist, their head level with the lock, and she thought, He’s trying to get in, right now .

Her heart began to hammer beneath her breastbone. She should’ve left. It had been stupid to stay. Too late. What she needed now was to banish the dark. She jumped up and smacked the light switch on the wall behind her, but nothing happened. She flicked it again, and again, and tried the lamp and the bathroom, but the power was out.

Then she smelled the smoke.

And she saw the smoke now, too: a thin, lazy haze, hanging in the air. It was what had made the light look odd to her, she realized in hindsight. She found her phone in the gloom, activated its flashlight and saw that the smoke was coming in from underneath the connecting doors.

Beach Read was on fire.

The front door was jammed. The hurricane shutters were down. Emily was trapped in here.

The shadow hadn’t been trying to get inside, she realized. It was Jack, locking the door behind him as he left.

Locking her in.

This time, he was going to kill someone in a fire.

He’d put something in the wine that he’d left for her, not Grace. To knock her out long enough for him to lock her in. Maybe Grace had innocently mentioned to him about Emily having her phone on her today and he realized that she’d recorded him. Or maybe he didn’t want to go home and face the consequences of his actions, so this was his out and he was taking her with him.

Well , Emily thought, at least the book will have an ending.

As she closed her eyes, she wondered who they’d get to write it now.

She heard a crack , a heavy object against something that wouldn’t give.

It felt distant and far away, like the sound of a television in another room. She wondered if she’d already fallen asleep and was dreaming it.

But then, no—

Crack .

She opened her eyes. All she could see was black. The smoke stung her eyes, making them water, making the blackness ripple.

Crack .

And now someone was calling her name as well.

‘Emily? Emily!’

A man’s voice.

She wanted to answer. In her head, she already had. In her head, she was screaming, loud and clear and desperately, but in reality, nothing was coming out. The distress signals her brain was sending couldn’t seem to connect with her voice, her throat, her breath, her mouth.

But then she thought, What if it’s Jack? Come to make sure the deed is done? What would he do if he found her alive? Resume pretending? Put his Good Guy act back on? Try to convince her that this was all Ben’s doing too?

He’d got away with it for so long, she wouldn’t put it past him.

‘Emily! Emily, if you can hear me, shout out. I can’t see …’

It wasn’t Jack’s voice.

It was Ben’s.

There was a heavy, suffocating weight on Emily’s chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe. When she inhaled, nothing happened. There was no relief, only pain and tightness. She felt like she might vomit. She didn’t think she could stay awake for much longer.

She wished Ben would just leave her be.

‘Emily?’ His voice was louder now, nearer. ‘ Emily! ’

No, she couldn’t think like that. She had to try. She had to survive. To get out, and to tell the truth about Jack.

To tell the truth about that night all those years ago to the one person to whose life it might make a difference.

To tell the truth about The Witness .

‘I’m here,’ she said – or thought she said. She didn’t even hear it herself. The fire was roaring like thunder, crackling and sizzling and popping, and the smoke had reached into her throat and stolen her voice.

And there was heat now, more than before. She could feel it singeing the skin on her face. And, at the edges of her vision, a bright ball of glow in the black that she didn’t even want to think about.

She couldn’t help but remember Jack’s hands. The melted skin. The deep welt on his back, like a thumb pushed into soft candle wax.

If Ben was here, trying to save her, where was Jack?

‘Here,’ she said.

But it wasn’t even a whisper.

She tried again, one last time, taking in a breath that was hot and burned and didn’t feel like air, pushing it back out with as much volume as she could manage.

‘Here, I’m here.’

And then hands were grabbing her. Hands were grabbing her hands.

She couldn’t see who they belonged to, but she presumed it was Ben. He was somewhere behind her. He’d pulled her hands over her head and now he was dragging her along the floor. She winced in pain as her hip met a corner, and something sharp dug momentarily into her thigh, and her T-shirt rode up her back and the bare skin there burned as it crossed the rattan rug.

She pushed her heels against the ground, trying to help, to make this evacuation go quicker.

And then, the strangest thing: she was rising up. Being lifted up.

And being burned – no, that was a jagged piece of glass slicing open the skin on the small of her back.

The sting of it, the pain, jumpstarted her senses and she looked up and saw Ben’s upside-down face leaning over hers.

And behind him, the night sky.

She was outside.

He’d got her outside, onto the deck.

‘We have to get down the stairs,’ he said now. He’d righted her into a standing position but she was entirely leaning on him, her own legs like jelly. ‘Can you walk?’

The answer was no and the staircase was too narrow for Ben to carry her down, so they improvised. He sat her down on the top step and walked down backwards, ahead of her, helping her scoot down, step-to-step, until they reached the end.

The swimming pool was a glowing blue gem, lit from underneath, its surface like glass – but a heavy haze of smoke hung in the air above it. When Emily looked up, she saw more billowing out from broken windows.

‘Come on,’ Ben said, pulling her towards the archway, into the garage, out onto the street.

He forced her across it, then lowered her into a sitting position on the kerb.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was the only way.’

She nodded, thinking he was talking about manhandling her out of there.

‘I knew what I was doing,’ he went on. ‘I left the fire extinguisher by the door so I could break the glass and get in to you. But I had to put the shutters down and I couldn’t use the key. I had to make it look real. It all had to look real.’

‘ Real? ’ she repeated.

‘I thought there’d be more time. I should’ve put something down by the connecting door. A towel or something. I didn’t realize how quickly the smoke would start to get through.’

Just as she put together what Ben was telling her, she heard sirens, in the distance.

‘Jean,’ she said.

‘She’s fine. She’s nowhere near here.’

‘Grace?’

‘She’s been back at the hotel since this afternoon.’

‘Jack?’

Ben looked away.

‘He was never going to stop,’ he said. ‘So someone had to stop him.’

Headlights, screeching around the corner, and then a car jerking violently to a stop just a few feet away.

Grace, Ruth and Joe got out of it, leaving doors open behind them.

Grace’s mouth fell open and when Emily turned to follow her gaze, she saw Beach Read’s gleaming white walls pumping out thick, black smoke.

Joe was looking around, scanning, as if trying to evaluate the situation before he made any moves.

Ruth was already panicking, her face distorted with shock and confusion and abject fear.

She ran straight to Emily, grabbed her by the shoulders.

‘Where’s Jack?’ she demanded, her eyes wide. ‘Where’s my brother? Where is he? Where’s Jack? ’