Page 82 of Guess Again

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Monday, August 4, 2025

LINDSAY PULLED INTO THE GARAGE OF HER HOME LOCATED IN THE Lower East Side neighborhood.

She had purchased the custom-built home the year before, after spending the last many years in the city.

She let out a restrained laugh as she parked in the expansive garage that was larger than Blake Cordis’s entire cottage.

A home he didn’t even own, but which had been bequeathed to him by the Prescott family in exchange for a lifetime of servitude looking after their stables.

It was such a sad existence and was still more than he deserved.

She shut down the engine of her Mercedes and closed the garage door.

Despite her excitement, she couldn’t get ahead of herself.

There was still much to do, but if her plan had gone according to schedule today, then Ethan Hall should have already found Portia Vail hidden away in the abandoned cabin in Rome.

A cursory search would have turned up Blake’s Saratoga 120s cigarettes, which Lindsay had planted when she was there over the weekend.

She had taken the package of cigarettes the night she broke into his cottage to reroute the encryption software to the IP address of Blake’s computer. Together with the prepaid phone she had planted in the warehouse, and the photos she had snapped of Portia Vail chained to the bathroom door, it would be enough for the authorities to take Blake into custody.

The final nail, of course, would be leading Ethan Hall to Callie’s body.

She had given the coordinates to Francis during their last session, and soon the authorities would find the location not far from North Point Pier.

It was there, at an old, abandoned power plant that stood at the water’s edge, where Lindsay had stashed Callie’s body in a 55-gallon barrel before rolling it into the lagoon.

An autopsy would reveal the cause of death to be trauma from a Callaway golf club.

The same club Lindsay had hidden in the closet of Blake’s cottage.

She’d checked on the barrel twice in the ten years that had passed.

In a strange twist of fate, the Prescott family had purchased the land that included the decrepit building that was once a power plant, and the lagoon next to it.

Consequently, the land had been uninhabited since, and the barrel had remained for ten years unattended and unnoticed just below the surface of the water.

She turned the garage lights off as she entered her home, simultaneously clicking on the kitchen lights.

She screamed when she saw Francis Bernard sitting at her kitchen table.

He wore a white T-shirt freckled with blood spatter.

Lindsay could have no idea that the blood belonged to Andre Monroe, the other person who had tried to take advantage of him while he was in prison.

The edges of Francis’s lips twisted into a tight smile.

“Hello, Dr. Larkin.”