Page 91 of Last Seen

“I didn’t do this. But I do need to ask you why you didn’t mention that another woman went missing from the Brockville Writers’ Retreat and you didn’t bother mentioning that my sister created a pattern.”

“Where in the hell did you hear that?”

She nods toward Boone. “She told me. And now she’s dead, like all the others.”

He looks over her shoulder at the body again and runs a hand over his face. “I know it wasn’t you.”

“How? Am I under surveillance?”

Something moves in his dark eyes, something disturbing. Of course she is.

“If you have eyes on me, surely you have eyes on the cabin.”

“I don’t. And I’m not watching you, either. It’s a small town. People are vigilant.”

“Yeah, so vigilant no one’s talking about the women who go missing from your small town.”

“Quit attacking me. I don’t have answers, okay?”

“Well, I met your father a few minutes before I stumbled onto this scene. Maybe he can educate us both. Why don’t we go have a chat—” Her words are cut off by the sound of an electric golf cart crunching to a halt in the gravel. Speak of the devil.

“Cameron?” Miles Brockton is furious. That handsome charm is gone, replaced by a black rage. He sees Halley, and his face changes, smoothing out, losing the irate edge, but not before she recognizes something.

In that split second, he looked like the stranger who approached her.

“You really don’t remember me.”

But it’s Miles’s voice instead, saying “Oh, no. Oh, no” over and over again, until the sheriff takes his father by the shoulder and leads him away. They talk quietly, and Halley tries not to panic.

The stranger is tied more deeply to Marchburg than she realized.

Chapter Thirty-Five

She hasn’t lied to the sheriff about her emotional state. She is outwardly calm, but inside, everything is surreal, as if Halley were in a dream, departed from her body and watching from above. The anger and fear fuel something deep inside that shuts off her senses, and she enters some sort of fugue state. It happened when she was fired. It happened when she found out Cat murdered her mother. And it’s happening now, again, in front of witnesses. She is present, but not. She watches the scene being processed and enacts her own role in the play—move over there; what is that? Look down; there is blood on your shoes—but doesn’t feel anything. There are no sensations but horror, playing on a loop.

Does this strange state emanate from the original murder? The head injury she sustained during her mother’s death? Is there now a lack of control in her prefrontal cortex? Is she a toddler having an emotional-meltdown tantrum because her brain stopped developing at six when she was lashed with unassailable trauma?

Is she simply in shock, the reality of the situation settling in? Three women dead. Three innocent people who did nothing but lend an ear to a friend and stranger.

Is it because she knows, deep in her heart, she is close to the murderer?

She is responsible for their deaths, just as surely as if she’d held the knife in her own hand.

She watches and waits. The killer is here. He is nearby. If she is careful, sentient, she will catch him out. If she steps wrongly, she will be at the receiving end of his knife.

She wonders now if the motivation behind the murders even matters. What will she do at the end? Try to reason with them? Ask questions and demand answers before she submits to the fateful cut? Of course, it won’t be like that. Whoever is doing this is playing a game, a sick and twisted game, and she is the chess piece they most covet. She is the queen, and all the moves are designed to fell her.

The knowledge of this, the understanding of her own futility, is almost a relief. There is an inevitability to this game.

But what if there is a stalemate?

In too many games, there can be no tie. There is always a winner, and there is always a loser. But in this one, perhaps there is a way to come to a draw. She just has to find it.

Noah Brockton arrives on the scene moments after his father, flour in his hair and a wild look in his eyes. He makes straight for Halley. “Are you okay?”

She nods.

“Thank God. Don’t move. I need to talk to Cam.”