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CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

As they speed toward the small cul-de-sac, Keller wishes she could be at McCray’s side at the hospital. At Pops’s house with her family.

But she needs to catch the man who tried to steal five kids from their families.

She’s uniquely familiar with the location where Mr. Belov has gone. Keller was there, mere hours ago, meeting the professor and his young wife and adorable babies.

She’s instructed the team that they are not to go in guns blazing. The element of surprise is their best chance at catching Ivan Belov. At saving Felix Goffman, the professor, and his wife and twins.

As Peters drives, Keller reflects on her meeting with Professor Turlington. She believed the charismatic professor. That he’d been the victim of a seductive young woman everyone said had severe problems.

By all accounts, though, Natasha Belov had been a joyful kid, a vivacious student her first year. But something happened soph omore year—and it happened the quarter she took Turlington’s government class. And maybe that’s the way it goes: We instinctively believe these charismatic, accomplished men and demonize their accusers.

They reach Professor Turlington’s street and Peters kills the headlights. It’s after midnight, quiet. Not the kind of neighborhood where anyone comes out this late. They park a few doors down. Two tactical teams are in place: One will take entry from the front of the house, one from the rear.

Peters is coordinating it all on his radio. He gives her a look. “You’re sure about this?”

She nods, double-checking the Kevlar vest Peters gave her.

They crouch-run to the front of the house where a team is already in stacked formation. The doorframe is splintered. Someone kicked it in before they arrived. She feels a shot of adrenaline rip through her.

They file silently into the house. Trailing the team, Keller hears voices. Someone shouting. Someone crying.

The lead raises his arm, closes his hand into a fist to signal for the team to come to a stop. Keller quietly makes her way to the front. The team lead shakes his head, gestures for her to get to the tail. But she peeks around the corner of the hall into the living room. The room strewn with the trappings of new parenthood, but also something horrific: the body of Felix Goffman, blood staining the carpet around his head.

Even worse, Ivan Belov has a gun pressed to the temple of Professor Turlington’s wife, who is visibly trembling, all the color drained from her face.

“Admit what you did!” Belov shouts. “You texted my daughter thirty-seven times the day she died. She wouldn’t have been on drugs or with those kids that night if you hadn’t…”

“No, I didn’t!” the professor shouts.

“I went through every single text. She told you she’d go to the police if you didn’t leave her alone.”

“I told you, I didn’t do anything to your daughter,” Professor Turlington whimpers.

Turlington’s young wife is weeping now, making occasional gulping sounds like she’s struggling to take in air, the gun still pressed firmly to her head.

“There’s a tradition passed down from my grandfather, a famous vodka maker,” Ivan Belov says. His tone is distant, detached. “When my Natasha was born, we buried a barrel of his best vodka. It was to stay there, to be excavated on her wedding day. The finest drink for her guests.” He swallows. “Now we will drink it at her funeral.” He pauses. “This is your last chance. To save your wife.”

Keller’s heart is galloping, but her hands are steady on her gun as she aims it at Belov. She tries to keep her thoughts clear, focusing on the best tactical move. How they can take Belov out without Mrs. Turlington being collateral damage. The curtains are drawn, so the team from the rear won’t have a clean shot. And if Keller and her team charge in, the gun pressed to the woman’s head might discharge as he’s taken down.

“Okay,” the professor says at last. “I’ll tell you. Just don’t hurt her.”

Belov gives the professor a hateful stare.

“It’s not what you think,” the professor says. “We were— I never forced her. We were together. And when she called that night, I came to help her.”

Keller feels her heart skip in her chest. The professor was at Panther Beach the night Natasha Belov got trapped in the cave and drowned.

“I was too late. I couldn’t…”

Keller watches as Mr. Belov’s face turns to stone. “You lie. She didn’t call you.”

“No… Please,” the professor says.

Keller believes Belov’s going to do it—she braces to take the shot—but then Belov raises his free hand, showing Turlington his dead daughter’s phone.

Keller can’t see the display, but a voice comes from the device. He’s playing a video.

“Who’s there?” a young woman’s tremulous voice says from the phone.

There’s the sound of wind blowing into the receiver.

“You guys aren’t funny.”

The voice stops. There’s a long beat of silence.

The voice returns, higher-pitched in panic. “What are you—? Get away from me. Don’t—”

Then there’s a rustling sound like quick movement. Like she’s running.

Mr. Belov says, “I thought it was the kids. But it was you …” He says this as if more to himself than to the professor.

The final pieces are aligning themselves in Keller’s head: After the prank, Felix Goffman thought Natasha was dead and carried her to the dunes, not the cave. Natasha must’ve come to, disoriented, her mind still spinning from the psychedelics, vodka, and cruel prank.

The rest of the students were gone. Natasha was alone on the beach.

Then someone else appeared. Professor Turlington. He’d slipped out of his house and followed her, hiding in the shadows until he could get her alone. Fuming all the while because he thought Natasha made the Rizz posts renewing the allegations against him. Enraged because she rejected him and ignored his barrage of texts.

Natasha must have been terrified, knowing Turlington was dangerously obsessed. Knowing he’d silenced her before. In a last, desperate move, she put her phone on video-record. Then she ran, stumbling across the sand, tucking the phone into her waterproof case and hiding it.

Keller has just heard the final words of the young woman.

She knows what happened next: When Turlington caught Natasha on the beach, he silenced her for good. Drowned her, then dragged her body into the cave to make it appear to be an accident. Maybe it was he who reported the PrankStool video. Trying to place other people at the beach that night in case his staged scene didn’t hold up.

Keller looks at Belov as he lowers the phone. He is going to shoot them both—make the professor watch his wife die first, feel that pain, then kill Turlington.

She can’t wait any longer, she has to risk it.

“Drop the gun, Mr. Belov,” she says, coming into the room, her weapon trained on Belov. She hears the team shuffle in behind her.

The grieving father doesn’t react at first.

“Drop the gun,” she repeats, louder. Then it happens in less than a heartbeat.

Belov shifts his gun and empties it into Professor Turlington.

Keller simultaneously discharges her firearm.

Belov falls to the floor. Next to the professor, next to Felix Goffman.

Agents burst through the back doors, kick Mr. Belov’s gun away, confirm he’s dead. That all three of them are. They hurry Professor Turlington’s wife out of the house, retrieve the babies safely from the nursery.

Keller turns over her gun to Peters, per Bureau protocol when an agent uses deadly force. Then she goes outside, takes in the night air, and calls her husband. She feels an ache in her chest, a sudden need to see him and her children.

“It’s over,” she tells Bob. “I’m coming home.”