Page 55 of The Last Housewife

I’d gotten the text from an unknown number:Initiation, midnight, 35 Bell Pond Road.The number was a dead end, even for Jamie’s team, so whoever it was had probably used a burner. Regardless, the message was clear: whatever the Paters had managed to dig up in their background check—besides my phone number—they’d found it unobjectionable, and I was in.

Now we were parked in the slumbering suburbs so I could deliver myself for punishment. Forinitiation, Jamie kept correcting, as if there was a difference.

“There’s a reason they hold their parties here,” I said, looking around. “It’s the perfect cover.” I dropped my phone and wedding ring into the cup holder. “You’re a child of suburbia, anyway, Jamie. You ever direct that analytic gaze inward?”

Jamie looked up at the moon through the windshield. “You mean, have I ever asked myself whether the way I was raised led to a lifetime of me burying my feelings of desperate, feral longing under a polite surface, because that’s what you’re supposed to do? Or whether the entire reason I run a podcast calledTransgressionsis because I was never allowed to transgress, and now I’m obsessed with it?”

“Something like that.”

He glanced at me and grinned. “Nah. Never thought of it.”

Thirty-five Bell Pond was another grand house, like the first. A huge porch, tall white columns, and a blue sign for Alec Barry, New York’s governor. Like the first house, it was quiet and still, only a few windows glowing. No hint of what lay inside.

“Property records say it’s a private residence owned by Mountainsong, this megachurch in Kingston,” Jamie said. “Over ten thousand members, and they do a ton of streaming sermons, real modern, but what they teach is old-school fire-and-brimstone stuff. That’s all we could find.”

I shivered. All day I’d felt calm, but now that I was here, I was vibrating. “Showtime.” I flipped up the mirror. “You’ll be here when I’m done?”

“I won’t move a muscle.”

“Good.” I shoved open the door and started to climb out, but Jamie stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

“You have the recorder?”

I patted my bra.

He nodded and squeezed my wrist. “If anyone tries to hurt you, screw the investigation and leave. I’m serious. Whatever it takes. You don’t have to do anything you don’t”—his voice caught—“want.” He cleared his throat. “Just be careful.”

***

I knocked on the door, three sharp raps. To my surprise, it opened immediately to a handsome man in his thirties, blond, clean-cut, and scowling. He wasn’t wearing a mask, and my heart jumped with the sudden fear I’d been sent to the wrong place.

“Yes?” He scanned me. “What do you want?”

I pulled my coat tighter. “I’m here for the party.”

“Wrong address.” He started to close the door, but I stuck out a hand.

“Nicole invited me.” I spoke fast. “I’m being initiated.”

He froze. “Who are you?”

My heart thundered, as if he could see through my shirt to the tiny recording device, no bigger than a button, wedged into my bra. Then it hit me: Nicole had given me instructions, hadn’t she? Back at the Sparrow. I searched my mind for the words, but all I could remember was her surprised face when I saidHappy hunting, right before she’d disappeared. “I’m here to be initiated,” I repeated, hoping the fact that I knew that much would work in my favor.

His eyes darted behind me, then he swung open the door. “Get inside.”

I barely had a chance to step inside the foyer—filled with large, dramatic Renaissance-style paintings of angels—before he seized my arm.

“What are you doing?” I resisted the urge to fight.

“There’s protocol,” he said, pulling me down the hall. “Nicole would’ve told you if she’d really invited you. You’re lying.”

Shit. “I know it. I just forgot.” I looked around, trying to keep calm and get my bearings. Then a voice cut through.

“She’s with me, Pater.”

The man stopped; we both turned to find Nicole at the far end of the hall.

“She didn’t say the words.”