In her periphery, Melissa watched Charlie continually tap his phone for updates with his left hand, managing never to lose control over the gun that was aimed directly at her head with his right. He had ordered her to come to a stop when they dead-ended in a beach parking lot. In the minutes that had passed, she had waited in silence as he kept checking his phone.
“Is this where you meant for us to end up,” she asked, “or is this like when we got lost on those winding roads in Italy and you refused to ask for directions?”
He glared across the truck cab at her, but then allowed himself a small grin. For a moment, he looked like the man she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. “I enjoyed your company more than I should have on our honeymoon.”
“Wow, you don’t just want to con me. You really hate me, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Me? No. Not personally.”
“But someone does,” she said, noticing the inflection in his voice. “Rachel, I assume.” She couldn’t imagine why the woman posing as Charlie Miller’s sister would despise her so intensely. “Did I prosecute someone in her family when I was at the DA’s office or something?”
He shook his head as if they were playing a round of Twenty Questions that had gone on too long.
“We do know each other at some level,” she said. “Tell me why we’re here. And why do you keep checking that phone?” She could tell from looking at the device that it wasn’t his usual phone.
“Good lord, you really are acting like we’re married.” He used his left hand to mimic a mouth prattling on. “You want explanations? Fine, I’m checking my phone because I’m waiting for the exact wording of your suicide note. We were working on it at the hotel but then I had to leave to meet you. And we’re here because you’re despondent and depressed and are going to wade into the water, weighed down by your clothing, and will drown… just the way you drowned your poor stepdaughter.”
After everything she’d learned about him in the past few hours, she obviously had not yet absorbed the depths of his depravity. He was utterly devoid of humanity.
“Every case I’ve covered on my podcast was about someone who was smart and yet still made a mistake. How are you going to get out of here? You’re at a dead end on a beach. You can’t leave with my U-Haul because then where will you park it? I suppose Rachel will pick you up.” She remembered saying goodbye to Charlie only this morning as he was leaving the cottage to pick up Rachel from the train station. She assumed now that Rachel had already driven to Long Island long before Riley disappeared. Rachel had to have been the one who had drugged her coffee and then snuck into the cottage to take Riley, posing as Melissa in Melissa’s car for the ride to Shelter Island. “What you said before about my being smart in the abstract but not about my own life? You’re not wrong. Bravo for convincing me that Rachel was your sister and not Riley’s mother. You really did have me convinced.”
He held her gaze for a few seconds, but she could not read his expression. “It’s funny. In another world, this would be a great case for your podcast, because I’m the one who didn’t make a mistake. Ironically, you may have been the one to help me with that. I learned a lot watching the way your mind works. Too bad no one will ever figure out the truth.”
Her eyes squinted at the reflection of headlights in the rearview mirror of the U-Haul.
“Did you see that car?” she asked. “That’s at least one mistake.”
The car pulled a quick U in the empty parking lot and disappeared. As it turned, she could have sworn that it was a white Tesla.
“Nice try,” he said.
“If something happens to me, the driver of that car will remember seeing this rental truck. At the angle we’re parked, with his headlights on, it would be obvious there’s someone in the passenger seat.”
“No way. Besides, did you see how quickly that car turned around? A Tesla driver without a care in the world. I’m sure he missed a friend’s address up the road. He didn’t notice a thing here and is probably arriving at his party by now.”
So, she had not been mistaken. The car was a Tesla, which meant it could have been Patrick. He had been worried about her. It was possible he’d been following her since she left the house. After insisting that he keep his distance from her, she was praying that he had ignored her instructions. If so, she needed to buy herself time.
“Your name isn’t Charlie Miller,” she blurted out.
“Yeah,” he said dryly, “no news to me.”
“I’m not the only one who knows. Before I drove to Riverhead, I told someone everything I know. They know I was leaving to meet you. You didn’t attend the University of Washington. There is no Linda. I saw a picture of the real Charlie Miller, and it’s obviously not you. They’ll figure out how you stole his ID. You won’t get away with this, and you and Rachel will spend the rest of your lives in prison, and Riley will grow up without a mother and father. If you stop now, you really haven’t even committed a serious crime. Kidnapping your own child isn’t illegal.”
The phone Charlie had been checking finally rang, and he answered immediately. “It’s almost done,” he said, never breaking eye contact with her. “She thinks she has an upper hand because she supposedly told someone about the real Charlie, as she calls him. She’s not as smart as we thought.”
She forced herself to take even breaths, even though she felt like a minnow circled by a great white shark. “I love you, too,” he said.
She suppressed a rush of nausea as he ended the call and rubbed his palms together. “It’s go time,” he announced. “I’ve got your script ready to go.” He hit the Record button on her phone while he held up his own screen with words ready to be recited.
She scanned the first paragraph. “I won’t do it,” she said.
“You will,” he said firmly. “If you don’t, I’ll kill your mother and your brother. I did my research. These are the rockiest waves close to your mother’s cottage. I can get to your family in seven minutes. I’ll make it look as if you shot them before committing suicide.”
“Can I ask just two questions?”
“Maybe. Depends what they are.”
“Is Riley safe?”
“Yes.”
“And you drugged me and then used my car to make it look like I took her to Shelter Island.”
“That’s probably two questions technically, and not me personally—I was actually in Antigua—but yes, you fell asleep because a few of your sleeping pills ended up crushed in your iced coffee.”
She was about to ask him how Rachel had managed to get inside the cottage, but quickly remembered how he had volunteered to run a few of the errands on her to-do list the previous week. “You were the one who picked up the keys from Mom’s realtor in the city,” she said.
His smile was gleefully smug. “You always say how much you love it when I take jobs off your plate. Here’s a bonus piece of information for you. The video footage from the ferry? Your car, your sunglasses, but obviously not you. I’m told Riley had the best time on the car ride. On the way off the island, she pretended she was a turtle in the back seat, tucking herself into the footwell beneath her blanket, just the way she was asked. She really is a great kid.” Melissa remembered finding the heart-printed blanket by the front door after Riley disappeared. Rachel must have tossed it to the floor when she returned the car keys and glasses before locking the front door behind her.
“So, who was that woman at the park who distracted me?”
“Some lonely, bitter woman we found on the internet. She had no clue what was going on. That’s enough chitchat. It’s time for you to record what we’ll call your final podcast.”
Melissa began to read the script that had been typed into a message on Charlie’s phone. Traumatized. Stress. Psychotic break. I held her under the water. It was exactly the story that had been fed to the police after Riley disappeared.
She continued to follow the script as he scrolled through the message. “My anxiety was also heightened by dishonest decisions I made in my professional life. My seminal wrongful conviction case—the supposed exoneration of Jennifer Duncan—is a complete fraud and a miscarriage of justice. Once she was out of prison, she admitted to me that she murdered her husband in cold blood for the sole purpose of inheriting—”
She came to a sudden stop and turned to look at Charlie in silence.
“Are you kidding me?” he yelled, slamming the truck door with his arm in anger. “Now we have to do it all over again. Read it word for literal word.”
“Or I won’t,” she said. “And that will be your mistake. Why do you even care about that case? It’s not enough to kill me? You have to tarnish my reputation, too?”
“Stop thinking you have any power.” He raised his gun for emphasis. She craned toward the driver’s side window as he moved to press the gun’s muzzle into her forehead. “I will give you one more chance to get this right. If you mess it up, I will type it into your phone, kill you, and then torture everyone you love for kicks before I finally put them down.”
Melissa was four seconds into her supposed confession, reading the predetermined words aloud, while the rest of her mind tried to figure out what she was missing. Fraud. The word TruthTeller invoked over and over again.
Melissa Eldredge is a phony and a fraud.
You’re a liar and a fraud. It’s all going to come out.
The woman in the park had called her a fraud and a hypocrite.
Why did he and Rachel care so much? Was it possible…?
“Hey,” he yelled, raising his hand as if to pistol-whip her. “Why did you stop reading again? We were almost done.”
It was the only explanation. “Now I know why you looked so proud of yourself that I hadn’t figured it out yet. Rachel is your sister. You’re Doug Hanover’s children. This is entirely about the estate lawsuit. Your father disinherited you, but you had a shot at getting the money after Jennifer Duncan was convicted of his murder. You want leverage to go back to probate court before the assets are actually transferred.”
Charlie waved his hands with mock excitement. “Ding ding ding, we have a winner. See, I knew you were smart. I inherit what you have as Charlie Miller, while our lawyer goes back to probate court to get us the real money.”
“But Riley calls you and your sister mommy and daddy,” Melissa said. “Does that mean—”
“Don’t be gross. That mommy and daddy stuff is automatic when they’re little. Once we came up with this plan, we just didn’t correct her.”
“So, one of you is her parent, right? Does that mean she’s really safe? Is Riley even her true name?”
He looked at her and shook his head. “Wow, you actually do care about her, don’t you? Do you really want to know?”
She nodded eagerly, desperate to know the truth about the girl who now felt like a piece of her own heart. She had told herself she was only buying time in case Patrick had been following her, but reality was setting in. She didn’t want to die, but if she had to, she wanted to know that Riley might have a life waiting for her.
“Yes, her real name is Riley. She’s Rebecca’s kid. Well, you know her as Rachel, but her name’s Rebecca. Once you’re out of the picture, Riley will go back to live with her mom like before. It won’t be long until she forgets all about you or the way she used to call me daddy.”
“Who’s her father?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. My sister never told me and refused to put the guy’s name on the birth certificate.”
“And your name?” Melissa remembered Jennifer describing the absolute cruelty of her husband’s two children, but if she had mentioned their names, Melissa could not recall them.
For the first time, Charlie looked a little sorry for her. “Brian. We were born with the last name Hanover, but our mom changed it to Bloom after our dad left. I guess raising kids without their crummy fathers runs in our family.”
She repeated the name to herself in silence. Brian Bloom. The man she married. The man she thought she had loved. The man who was going to kill her.
“Okay, I mean it, this is your last chance. Read the entire note into the phone. If not, I’m moving on to Plan B. You’re not helping yourself. Or Mike or Nancy.”
She hated the sound of her family’s names on his lips.
For the next three minutes, she read the words that had been scripted for her. Even though she tried to alter her usual inflection so the people closest to her might know she was under duress, Charlie looked satisfied as they ended the recording.
“Get out,” he commanded. He marched her at gunpoint to the edge of the parking lot, where he ordered her to take off her sneakers. With the gun at her back, she made her way through cool, soft sand toward the sound of waves swelling at the end of the beach. For once, the weather forecast had been right. The wind was whipping the surf into steep surges. She watched a lone nighthawk zagging turbulently, struggling to make headway against the gusts.
Her eyes darted wildly as she searched for any possible way to escape. She felt herself mentally reaching for the glint of a broken bottle washed up on the sand, but she had no way to make contact with it physically. Her heart fell as she stepped past it.
When she could walk no further, she understood why Charlie had brought her here. Beyond the sand was a rocky beach of stacked, slick cobbles, where angry whitecaps churned and crashed, ricocheting against the backside of the inlet.
“Keep going,” he ordered as he came to a halt on the sand, waving the gun for emphasis. “Walk out there, onto the rocks.”
As she took one perilous step after another, she stared at the tumultuous beating of the water on the stones beneath her bare feet. She imagined the water pouring over her face, gushing into her nostrils and mouth. She would be sucked down by the violent undertow and rolled back to sea. All of her fears, however repressed, had kept her from learning how to swim. If she slipped into the surf, her death would be certain.
She turned to face him, searching the horizon behind him, hoping for any sign that the white Tesla had in fact been Patrick, but saw nothing. She tried to tell herself she had made the right decision, waiting to resist his commands until she was here in the open air, instead of trapped with him inside the truck or on the narrow beach path. Here, she could at least have freedom of movement if he started to shoot, but he was on solid ground on the sandy beach, while she was balanced precariously, trying to avoid falling into treacherous waves that would be well over her head.
“You won’t get away with it,” she said.
“I believe you told me that,” he said, unperturbed. “Your hypothetical friend knows the truth.”
“Not just a friend,” she said. “The police. I told them, too. I went to the Southampton precinct. I left documentation. I called the University of Washington alumni office. I have proof. The real Charlie’s in a vegetative state. The police will trace his driver’s license and passport. You managed to renew them but the pictures won’t match. You’re going down.”
The smug, pompous look on his face melted away. He wasn’t Charlie. He wasn’t her kidnapper. He was someone else now.
She flashed back to her days at the district attorney’s office, when cocky defendants knew she had them in a corner. For all the professional gratification she had found from vindicating innocent people as a defense attorney, she realized she also missed being on the other side.
In the seconds when Charlie paused, she noticed movement in the sand behind him, giving her a glimmer of hope. Maybe it was her partial text to Katie, or the message she had left at the police station, or the white Tesla taking a U-turn in the parking lot. She had to hope that one of her lifelines had come through. If she was alone here with this man any longer, she was going to die.
She had bought herself all the time there was to be found. She had to act.
She pictured herself lunging toward him, somehow making her way off these slippery rocks, and then reaching him on the sand, where she’d go for his gun. She had no doubt that he would pull the trigger to stop her. If his first attempt missed, she might have enough time to get to him before he could fire off a second bullet. Even then, how could she possibly take that weapon from his control?
But as risky as it was, it might be her only chance at survival.
As she took a deep breath to steady her nerves, she suddenly heard a voice cry out from the beach. “Melissa!” Even beneath the howl of the violent ocean winds, she was certain the voice that was calling her name belonged to Mike.
Charlie turned his head away from her for a split second. She squatted low and charged at him with all of her strength. His eyes widened, displaying his shock before she barreled into his abdomen. As he tumbled backward, he fired off an uncontrolled gunshot. She had never felt so large, forcing herself to fall flat, pressing all of her weight against his body.
As his left hand caught in Melissa’s long hair—caught and twisted and held—she suddenly imagined her three-year-old self reaching out toward her mother from that icy, narrow balcony as the railing began to crumble. Like a permanent imprint on her sensory nerves, she could still feel her mother’s hands in her hair as she fought to take hold of her baby while Carl Harmon grabbed at Melissa’s legs as he began his fall into the angry, rock-filled surf below.
She would fight as hard now to save herself as her mother had forty years earlier. Once Charlie was on his back, she dug her elbows into his forearms while she jabbed at his lower body with her knees. Spotting the gun still in his right hand, she focused all of her weight in that direction. If it hadn’t been for the sand, she might have broken his arm.
Charlie managed to bend his wrist enough to aim the muzzle of the gun toward her belly. She wrapped both of her hands around the barrel of the handgun, pinning her shoulders and torso against his upper body, struggling to steer the gun in another direction. As she saw the muzzle aimed directly at her face, she bit down on his forearm, eliciting a vicious growl. Once he released his grip on the gun, she batted it onto the slippery rocks behind them.
She clawed her way through the sand, trying to make her way to the broken glass she had spotted before. Charlie was grabbing at her ankles when she managed to land a solid kick in his chest with the heel of her flexed foot. When she heard a deep grunt as air was knocked from his lungs, she thought she might have a chance. She threw herself forward and extended her right arm. A dark shadow emerged beneath the moonlight as her fingertips located the piece of cold, smooth glass on the damp sand.
She rolled onto her back just as Charlie—Brian Bloom—dove on top of her. He screamed as she sliced the glass across his shoulder, cutting his shirt open. She was about to cut him again when his body weight suddenly lifted from hers. Mike and Patrick were on either side of him, flipping Charlie onto his back. He winced as the three of them piled on top of him, pinning him to the ground, but he would not stop squirming.
“Stop fighting,” Mike yelled, “or your head’s going to find itself in a fight with those rocks over there.”
Charlie continued to resist, trying to move his left hand toward his back pocket.
“Gun!” Patrick screamed. “He’s reaching for a gun.”
Melissa got to Charlie’s pocket first. His body went limp at the sight of his phone in Melissa’s hands.
“Rachel was the last person to call him. He was probably trying to warn her off.”
She tapped on the number of his last incoming call. One ring and then an answer. “Did you do it? Is she dead?”
She recognized the voice, eager and elated. It didn’t belong to Rachel.