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Mia Ripley knew this place.

‘Paradise Point,’ she said.

‘Very good, Agent Ripley.’ Sarah pushed the barrel of the gun into the back of Mia’s forehead. The journey had been too direct for Ripley’s liking. She hadn’t had a chance to crash the car into a wall or the ocean. Now she’d arrived at her apparent destination.

‘I haven’t been an agent in months.’

‘Yet here you are. Out.’

Ripley complied. Sarah joined her, and direct her down a ramp that led to the beach.

A lead weight settled into Ripley’s stomach, and not because someone was pointing a revolver at her.

This was Paradise Point Beach, where 26 ago, they’d discovered four dead bodies.

Ripley had only been brought in on the fourth, and her mind conjured up those old images: a man buried alive at high tide, discovered when the water receded.

The footprints of investigators trampling potential evidence.

Yellow tape fluttering in the sea breeze.

And a small boy clutching a purple paperback, asking her if drowning hurt.

Ripley started forward. Ripley’s law enforcement instincts screamed at her to make a move, but an odd curiosity propelled her forward. Plus, the beach had more space. Better to make a move when there wasn’t a chance of a bullet bouncing off a wall or a railing.

‘Where am I going?’

‘Keep walking. You’ll see soon enough.’

The access road led down to the sand. Ahead, the ocean stretched black and infinite under the night sky.

To their right, a massive limestone outcropping jutted from the sand like the prow of a ship run aground.

The original crime scene had been twenty yards past it, where tidal calculations had determined exactly how long it would take for the rising water to drown a man buried to his neck.

A figure stood in the shadow of the rock. Male, average height, form obscured by darkness but posture unmistakably expectant. As they approached, moonlight carved his features from the surrounding blackness.

Ripley had seen the same man just a few hours ago.

Robert Lawrence. Sarah’s boyfriend, publisher, and now Ripley realized – co-conspirator. He stood next to a deep hole, a shovel discarded beside it.

‘Nice of you to join us, Agent Ripley.’

Ripley’s eyes darted around. Sand. Ocean. Rock. Them. No one else. Just these two lunatics, a loaded gun, and a hole in the ground that looked suspiciously the same size as her. It didn’t take a genius, or even a moderately competent FBI profiler, to connect those particular dots.

‘Didn’t have much of a choice.’

Robert Lawrence emerged from the gloom, and Ripley was suddenly transported back in time. Everything was oddly familiar, but glossed over with a modern filter. She recognized the face, the expression.

26 years ago he was just a boy, and now he was a man.

‘Nathan Taylor,’ Ripley said.

‘Very good. How’d you know?’

‘Lucky guess.’

Sarah positioned herself ten feet from her boyfriend, still with the gun aimed at her. ‘You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Well, this look familiar?’ Nathan picked up the shovel and used it to show how deep the hole was. ‘It should. You saw something like this back in 1998.’

Come on, Dark, Ripley thought. Please have figured this out.

‘Yeah I did. Why are you doing this?’

Nathan slammed the shovel back into the sand. ‘Y’see, this is what infuriates me. You’re a profiler, aren’t you? You of all people should know why I’m doing this!’

‘I have an idea. I just want to hear it from your mouth.’

‘Lies. Just like you lied to me years ago.’

‘What? You wanted me to tell you the truth when you were ten years old?’

‘Yes, because you don’t realize what that does to a kid.’

‘Alright, I’m sorry for lying. Happy?’

Robert – or Nathan – stepped closer. ‘I’m far from happy. You promised you’d catch the guy that did it, and did you?’

‘No,’ Ripley said. The tide was coming in now. It stopped a few feet from the edge of the hole that Nathan had dug.

‘No, you didn’t. And because of you, I’ve had to live with being part of a story. One without an ending. And when the story is the only thing people see, eventually you start to see yourself that way too. Nathan Taylor: The Boy On The Beach.’

Ripley studied Nathan Taylor’s face in the moonlight.

The sharp angles and the asymmetric twitch at the corner of his mouth.

All the classic physiological tells of someone whose internal narrative had detached from objective reality.

She’d seen this particular flavor of delusion before, usually in interview rooms, usually with someone in restraints. Never beside her own grave.

‘Believe me, Nathan, that whole thing haunts me as much as it does you. You think I don’t remember it? Hell, I knew I recognized you when I saw you at Thomas Webb’s house. As soon as I saw you under that rock, I remembered you vividly. Doesn’t that prove it?’

‘It proves nothing.’ He looked out and admired the tide. ‘You found my dad in a hole, and that’s what’s going to happen to you. Understand?’

Keep him talking. Buy as much time as you can.

‘You don’t remember me, Nathan.’

‘What? I remember you. I studied you. I’d have killed you already if you didn’t live in D.C.’

‘No. You’ve mythologized me.’

The tide licked the edges of the pit now. Black water glistened like spilled oil in the moonlight.

‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘It means I’m a symbol to you, not a person. I’m not Agent Ripley to you. I’m The Woman Who Lied. I’m The System That Failed.’

‘Don’t try to psychoanalyze me,’ Nathan spat as he grabbed the shovel again. ‘You’re not that good at it. If you were, you’d have caught the Sandman before he buried my father.’

‘There was no Sandman, you idiot.’

Nathan froze. The shovel slipped an inch through his fingers as his face contorted with confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your father wasn’t murdered by a serial killer. Neither were the other three men found on this beach.’

‘Bullshit. They found four bodies!’

Ripley noted the widening of his pupils, the rapid pulse hammering at his throat.

Classic sympathetic nervous system response.

His fight-or-flight was kicking into overdrive.

She’d pushed him to the edge, and now she needed to guide him through what came next without getting buried alive in the process.

‘Yeah, we did. But nobody put them in those holes. They put themselves in there.’

Sarah shifted her position, the gun in her hand momentarily wavering as confusion flickered across her face. This clearly wasn’t part of whatever script she’d anticipated for the night. ‘She’s lying! She’s trying to trick you!’

‘Bitch, I was part of the task force. You just read about it from books. Those holes in the sand? They’re called methane depressions. This beach is full of them.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘When organic material decomposes beneath the sand, it releases methane gas. These gas pockets can create depressions in the beach, which are rectangular holes.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Google it when you get to prison.’

‘No. No, that’s not what happened.’ Nathan moved the shovel between them like a shield. ‘This is the hole I dug. For you. Just like someone dug one for my father.’

Ripley took a few steps back. Maybe with enough distance, she could run and disappear around the other side of the rock before Sarah managed to discharge a bullet. ‘No one dug any holes, genius. Now I know what you’re wondering – how did your dad end up in that hole?’

‘It doesn’t matter!’ Nathan screamed. Sarah also put some distance between herself and her boyfriend.

Under other circumstances, Ripley might have laughed.

It was as if Nathan had been a rock star – being the son of a serial killer victim and all – but had now been fired from the band and lost his aura.

‘It does matter. Details matter. All of the victims had a history of depression. Three of them were in debt, including your dad. We found alcohol and Benzodiazepines in his system. So, how’d he get in the hole?

’ Ripley pointed to the roof of the rock.

‘At its peak, this thing is about a hundred feet above the water.’

‘So?’

‘Ever heard the term suicide hotspot ?’ Ripley watched the tide slither closer to the hole. If her time was running out, she might as well spend it detonating this man’s entire worldview. ‘Your dad jumped into the water, and then the tide carried him to that hole.’

Nathan’s face transformed before Ripley’s eyes. It was the kind of transformation she’d witnessed in a hundred interrogation rooms when lies crumbled into dust. First came disbelief, then the rapid eye movements as his brain frantically searched for alternative narratives.

Finally, the blood drained and left a white mask in place.

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I heard you that day. You said ligature marks, restraints. ’

Ripley knew this moment. When you stripped away the foundational lie that held someone together, you didn’t get truth. Throughout this interaction, Sarah had remained oddly passive. Ripley guessed that was their relationship dynamic embodied.

‘Yeah, I said there weren’t any.’ The comment came out more deadpan that Ripley intended. ‘If you don’t believe your dad committed suicide, look at the obvious thing here, Nathan.’

Nathan wasn’t pacing as such, but he was moving in a strange circular motion. He was wielding the shovel like a sword. ‘Which is?’

‘Don’t listen to her!’ Sarah tried again. ‘I’ll shoot you right here!’

‘You could shoot the ocean and still miss.’

‘Quiet! Both of you. What’s the obvious , Agent Ripley?’