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CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Mrs. Belov keeps the gun trained on Keller. The tremor in her grip tells Keller that the woman doesn’t have the stomach to shoot her. That she should charge the grieving mother. If Keller doesn’t get help soon, the students will die, and McCray needs immediate medical attention, if it’s not already too late.

But the twins. Bob. She can’t take the risk. The task force will be here any moment.

“It’s not too late to save them,” Keller says.

Mrs. Belov says, “Stop talking.”

“The police are almost here. You won’t escape. I’m not the only one who knows it was you who took the students.”

“I said, stop—”

Mrs. Belov is stopped short by a large figure rushing her from an oblique angle. After a jarring collision and nearly zero struggle, Mrs. Belov lies pinned tight to the sand, Keller’s service weapon flung out of her reach.

Keller’s heart drops when she realizes who’s straddling the woman.

Bob.

Bob!

It’s then that a sea of bodies storms down from the bluff above. Before Keller can move, men and women in blue windbreakers are everywhere. Pulling Bob gently off Mrs. Belov, then securing the woman in cuffs.

Keller turns toward a sound, the blades of a helicopter slashing the air as it projects a searchlight beam onto the sea cave.

A voice murmurs in her ear: “Worst date night ever .”

She turns and throws her arms around Bob. But then she yanks away and reels in a panic: “McCray?”

“We’ve got a medic working on him, he’s still conscious,” her ASAC says, approaching them. Peters looks different, like the stress has chewed away a piece of him.

“The kids?” she asks, still frantic.

“They’re on it.” He angles his head at the rescue helicopter.

“Belov took Felix Goffman,” Keller says.

“Do you know where?”

Keller shakes her head. “I need to talk to his wife.”

Minutes later, Keller sits in the front seat of a police cruiser, her gaze on the woman handcuffed in the back.

“We need to find your husband, Mrs. Belov. For his own safety.”

Iza Belov appears ravaged, like she hasn’t slept in days. She stares ahead blankly.

Keller continues. “Is this what Natasha would want? Your husband taken down like a hunted animal?”

Finally, a reaction: Mrs. Belov’s eyes meet Keller’s. “Are they all right? The other students.”

“They’re out of the cave,” Keller says. “But far from all right. Right now, we need to know where your husband took Felix Goffman.”

Mrs. Belov stares ahead blankly. “I knew when that boy was shot that first night…”

“Help us find your husband. So we can bring him back safe.”

Bloodshot eyes look into Keller’s. “When the police gave us Natasha’s belongings, I told my husband not to go through her phone.” She looks out the car window. “That there are some things we don’t need to know. That these days a phone is more personal than a diary. But he wouldn’t listen. He saw her texts and her web searches and her pictures. He saw videos of them that night. Saw a group text. That’s when he changed. I kept thinking he’d let those kids go. But each day we held the students, he would find something else on her phone, something that would break his heart again.”

Keller realizes that Mrs. Belov isn’t going to tell her where to find her husband, if she even knows. “Why did you take the students?”

Belov lets out a strangled laugh. “He wanted them to feel what she felt when they chased her in that cave.” She swallows. “I did too, at first. But then my head started to clear. I said we should let them go.”

Keller imagines the scene: The Belovs summoning the students to the park using Natasha’s phone. Maybe they hadn’t intended at first to take the students; maybe they wanted to confront them, but then things spun out of control. Mark Wong was shot. Then they restrained The Five in the van and there was no turning back.

Mrs. Belov continues: “This morning, my husband found a file on Natasha’s phone, a file that explained why she—why the drugs, the suicide attempt last summer, the distancing herself from her friends, from us.”

“What did he find?” Keller asks.

“Texts. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Harassing her, stalking her. Threatening her.”

Keller’s heart is accelerating.

“Who?”

Mrs. Belov shakes her head again.

“My daughter didn’t use his real name in her contacts. She called him ‘Dr. Creep.’”

Keller frowns.

“He gave her a nickname too,” Mrs. Belov spits the words. “He called Natasha his butterfly.”

Keller feels a lightning bolt crack through her. She rushes out of the car and tells her ASAC that she thinks she knows where Ivan Belov took Felix.