Page 58

Rowan

The sound of a baby’s cry rises and then falls into silence. I forget to breathe.

Beside me, Lickie whimpers.

I force air into my lungs. God, where is that noise coming from?

“Beatrice? We’re coming up.”

“We?” she asks in a strained voice.

“I have the dog with me.”

“Good,” she says. “I could use a cuddle right now.”

I can hear her clearly, but I can’t see her even as I reach the second floor and ease my way around the curved gallery toward the next flight of stairs.

It’s gloomy here. There are no lights on in any of the rooms. And cloud cover outside means there’s barely any light filtering through the stained glass above.

Every open doorway that we pass gives me the heebie-jeebies. But the glow from the top floor gets brighter as I begin the final climb to the third floor.

Lickie suddenly overcomes her hesitation, and her tail begins to wag. Maybe she’s caught the scent of Beatrice. So I let go of the leash and let her proceed ahead of me. She vaults up the stairs, toenails clicking on the polished wood. Then she disappears from view.

“Hello, girl,” Beatrice says in a low voice. “Hi. You just sit right here, okay? Who’s a good girl?”

My phone chimes with two texts as I reach the top of the stairs. I reach for it automatically, but I don’t look at the screen. I’m distracted by a mess on the floor—torn pages strewn around.

Lifting my gaze, I’m about to ask why, when I finally spot Beatrice. She’s reaching behind an old metal radiator on the gallery wall.

And drawing out a gun.

By the time my brain makes sense of this, she’s pointing it at me. “Hands where I can see them,” she says. “Drop the phone.”

I freeze. “What the hell are you doing?”

“ Drop the phone! ” she shouts.

My fingers loosen their grip on the phone, and it crashes to the wood floor. “Beatrice,” I say, my voice tense. “Please. Tell me what’s going on. You need to put down the gun before someone gets hurt.” Even as I say it, my stomach drops into my shoes.

Because I think she intends to hurt me. And I’m realizing that she probably killed Tim, too. She must have. All these papers on the floor? They’re the right size and shape to have come from his Moleskine notebooks. I think I recognize his slanting script.

“ Why? ” I demand.

But she isn’t listening. “Look at me,” she says. “Catch.”

She lobs something at me, and I grab it so it doesn’t hit me. It’s a pair of handcuffs, unlocked.

“Put one of those around your wrist.” She squares her body with mine and aims the gun straight at me. “ Now .”

I fumble with the handcuffs, managing to close one of them around my left wrist. My mind is whirling. What the hell is she doing?

“I want to hear the cuff click,” she orders.

It does. But my mind is still churning. If Beatrice killed Tim, then she’s the one who threw his gun in the dumpster. “Did... did you try to pin Tim’s murder on Harrison? How’d you even know who he was?” I can’t look her in the eye, because my gaze is trapped on the gun’s barrel. It’s still aimed squarely at my chest.

“Harrison was my only mistake. He was the wrong choice anyway. Wincotts always land on their feet.”

None of that makes sense to me. But she doesn’t seem inclined to explain herself.

“Walk over to the railing and sit down. Move .”

Lickie whines, and I cast a glance in her direction. Beatrice has looped her leash around the cast-iron radiator, trapping Lickie by the wall.

My dog can tell that something is wrong, but she can’t help me.

I move toward the banister on shaky legs, because I don’t think I have a choice. I step over Tim’s papers, wondering what Beatrice learned. And why she cares.

Beside the railing, I lower myself carefully to the floor.

“Face away from me. Spread your arms on the spindles as wide as they can go.”

Balusters, not spindles , my architect brain suggests. I know buildings, but people confuse me. And whatever is wrong with Beatrice is way above my pay grade.

Trying to stay alive, I do exactly as Beatrice commands. I spread my arms wide, gripping the balusters with my hands. The gesture reminds me eerily of a crucifix.

Beatrice is insane . I really am the worst judge of character in the world.

“Don’t move a muscle,” she demands.

“ Why? ” I repeat, my cheek resting against a baluster. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Not to me,” she says in a low voice. “To my family.”

“Your family,” I repeat slowly, her words sloshing around in my terrified mind. “You’re... a Wincott ?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she quickly yanks the free end of the handcuffs and locks it to a baluster. Having cuffed me, I can hear Beatrice backing away again.

But I’m so confused. She could have shot me already if that was her plan.

So what is the plan? My heart is racing and my head is muzzy with fear. It’s hard to think.

Then my phone chimes again from its facedown spot on the floor. We both turn our heads toward the sound.

And I don’t think at all. I lunge for the phone with my free hand, my body flailing awkwardly as the cuff clanks against the balustrade.

My fingertip grazes the phone. And then Beatrice slams her foot down on my hand. I actually hear bones snap.

I howl as pain streaks up my arm, instant and shocking.

Lickie loses her mind, snarling and barking. And she’s straining so hard on her collar that I hear choking sounds.

My hand is screaming, my dog can’t help me, and my eyes are flooding with tears. On a silent sob, I curl myself around my broken hand.

“Stupid bitch.” Beatrice kicks me in the ribs and then in the kidney. Two quick jabs. “Sit up before I kick you in the head. And you shut up!” This last order is directed at Lickie.

Lickie quiets, but probably only because Beatrice backs away from me.

Nausea wells in my throat as I look over my shoulder at her. She’s still aiming the gun at me.

“So now you know I’m serious,” she says in a low voice as I struggle onto my ass, my broken hand cradled in my lap, tears streaming.

I don’t understand why this is happening. But I know I could die here tonight.

Beatrice—still aiming that gun—grabs my phone up off the floor with a gloved hand.

Oh God, gloves . She planned this. She lured me here to kill me. Panic claws at my insides. “Who’s the text from?” I gasp.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, powering down the phone. “Nothing matters anymore. This ends tonight.”

“What ends?” I need to keep her talking.

“You’re going to kill yourself, Rowan. You poor thing. Because you feel awful about killing Tim, and the guilt is eating you alive.” She nudges a notebook toward me. “After all, Tim used you. His notes are very confessional. Now you know that he never loved you. It was just too devastating, so you cracked.”

You’re the one who’s cracked . It’s the first clear thought I’ve had since she broke my hand. Blood pounds in my ears, but I need to concentrate. “If you shoot me, you’ll get caught. Why take that risk? We spoke on the phone just a half hour ago.”

“That was by design. Actually, I learned this from you—watch your location data. My phone is at home in my apartment right now, pinging away. I called you on my iPad. Later tonight I’ll throw it off the pier.”

“But the new surveillance cameras,” I choke out. “You’ll be on the footage.”

“They’re switched off. In fact, they’ve been flickering on and off for two days,” she says. “Maybe the ghost did it!” She laughs.

“Nobody would believe that.”

“I’m very believable, Rowan. You bought into a ghost baby , for fuck’s sake.”

Pain throbs through my arm like a wave. But I keep arguing. “It still won’t work. Too many people know what I was working on. I dug up a lot of information,” I lie. “And Tim’s birth mother has decided to talk to the police.”

“That junkie? She’s dead, Rowan. It was so easy. All I had to do was gift her some high-quality fentanyl. She OD’d this morning.”

My chest seizes. Oh Laura . If it’s true, then it’s partly my fault. My digging set her off. Oh God . “But why cover up for Marcus Wincott? Why do you care if the whole world knows he was a creep?”

She grabs a broom that’s leaning against the wall and swings at me. My hands are useless, so I yank up my knees defensively. The broom handle slams into my head, and I gasp.

“That creep was my father, you idiot. And I won’t let you take down the family. Not over one dead man’s bad choices.”

I’m trying to process this bombshell as she steps up to the railing. My phone is still in her hand. She throws it over the railing, and it seems to take forever until I hear it smash two stories below.