WHERE IS HE?
The green dry-erase marker trembles in her hand as she writes. She’s barely looking at the whiteboard; her eyes scan the darkness outside. Then she leans to her telescope, still aimed at Deek’s window. Pressing her face to the eye cup makes her feel achingly vulnerable. She hates sacrificing her peripheral vision.
In the curved glass, she finds Deek. He swivels his own telescope to scan left, then right. A long sweep, searching the grass. This worries her.
Where the hell is he?
The hairs on her arms prickle. She checks over her own shoulder—nothing in the room with her. Just the wind and the downpour, clearly audible through the broken window.
The broken window.
Moving fast, Emma tips her reading sofa over and pushes it—gasping with exertion—to block the empty window frame. The bearskin rug bunches up underneath. It’s more an inconvenience than an obstacle. When the author attacks again, he’ll easily push it aside. But this will make noise. Emma will hear it. She’ll know where the attack is coming from and she’ll have a few seconds to act.
It’s a razor-thin advantage, but it’s something.
In the faraway window, she can see Deek has paused his search. He grabs his marker.
GARAGE, he writes.
Somehow it’s scarier to know only the author’s general area. Like he’s immaterial, omniscient. She wonders how he’ll describe the night’s events in Murder Beach. Will he cast himself as a perfect, infallible predator? Will he gloss over Emma’s small victories?
Now Deek points left.
BACKYARD
He’s moving. Circling the house.
Emma hates communicating like this, but it’s the only option left. The killer can read a whiteboard, too. He might already be eavesdropping.
She senses the author’s motives have changed. The stakes have escalated. The dead FedEx driver will soon be reported missing. H. G. Kane is operating on a ticking clock now and he’s probing the house for another entry point, deciding on his next angle of attack. This means that right now, while he’s focused on Emma, is Deek’s best chance to escape. Once he realizes there’s another witness involved (if he hasn’t already), he’ll be forced to kill again.
TAKE YOUR JEEP, she writes to her neighbor. DRIVE, GET HELP.
He’d already ensured both vehicles were disabled.
She erases and writes: RUN ON FOOT.
Emma had to know that an unarmed arthritic man in his mid-sixties couldn’t possibly outrun a killer through a quagmire of wet sand and thick grass. To say nothing of the simple geographic problem posed by the Strand itself—the town and whatever few summer homes were still occupied in late December were all to the south.
Any direct route of escape would cut directly past Emma’s house, through his sights.
“Damn it.” She forgot about that.
But . . . there are homes north of Deek’s, too. A few dozen farther up the beach, toward the rocky seawall. She knows the cabins are all unoccupied, yes. But still useful.
She erases—again—and writes: RUN NORTH, BREAK INTO A HOUSE, USE PHONE.
Not an option.
When he dug up the neighborhood’s phone lines buried beside Wave Drive, he’d been unable to tell which black cable served Emma’s house. They were unmarked and seemed to splice together in a way that his preliminary Google research hadn’t prepared him for. So he made the decision to cut them all, cleanly severing landline communication with every single residence to the north—
“Fuck.” She wants to throw her marker. Running in any direction is too risky, and Deek won’t stand a chance if he’s spotted.
The old man has written a new message. He stares across the gulf at her with grave eyes.
WE NEED TO FIGHT HIM
“Yeah. I know.”
He underlines: FIGHT HIM
“Agreed.”
He adds: HAVE WEAPONS?
Her best kitchen knife is gone. The others are either too dull or too flimsy. What else? She opens drawers clattering with butter knives, spoons, measuring cups. Nothing sharp enough to stab or solid enough to swing. But she has an idea. From the lower cupboard—where the author’s sword ripped away the cabinet door—she grabs Jules’s largest cooking pan, drops it in the sink, and twists the faucet to full blast.
Through the kitchen window marked with smeared blood, she scans the darkness outside. Just sheets of rain and wind-whipped grass.
I’M COMING OVER, Deek writes. CAN HELP
No. She shakes her head. She won’t allow another bystander to die tonight. Deek is an old man. He might be a bit drunk. He won’t hold up in a fight. And if he comes over, he’ll sacrifice their only advantage: his telescopic view of Emma’s house.
STAY THERE, she writes. TELL ME WHEN HE MOVES
Deek nods. Reluctantly.
DON’T LOSE SIGHT OF HIM
He nods again.
Emma is afraid to write more. She has to assume that every word she writes is being read by the killer, too. She has to be careful.
Resigned to his supporting role, Deek answers: WILL HELP AS MUCH AS I CAN
“Thanks.”
WE’LL THINK OF SOMETHING
“Love your optimism.”
Two shut-ins, communicating by whiteboard as a murderer circles in the tall grass outside. No cars. No guns. No phones.
Emma has spent weeks envisioning her own death, and it doesn’t alarm her that she will almost certainly die tonight. There’s no point sugarcoating it. And Deek’s odds aren’t great, either. But another razor-thin advantage surfaces in her mind: the author can monitor their communications but can’t attack Deek without leaving Emma’s house unguarded. And vice versa. For all of H. G. Kane’s power, he can only be in one place at a time.
Assuming there’s only one of him.
That, too.
While the pan fills under the kitchen faucet, Emma hurries downstairs into the basement. She hates breaking eyeshot with Deek, but this is a necessary risk. At the bottom of the staircase, she finds the light switch on her first try and searches Jules’s toolbox for weapons.
Here in the clammy basement she notices how dizzy she feels. Light-headed. Her mind races without traction, like an uncomfortable high. For weeks she’s subsisted on nine hundred calories a day, and even in her best shape, taking on a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound swordsman would be near hopeless. She’s a long way from her best shape.
Emma has an alarming thought.
It comes to her uninvited, crawling under the door on tiny spider legs and whispering in her ear. She could go outside, face her killer, and end it.
Right now.
It would be so easy. Easier than putting on a weighted backpack and walking into the waves, forcing her body to take every miserable ice-cold step. It would be out of her control entirely. She’s afraid of how comforting it sounds. How good, even.
But . . . she’d be abandoning Laika.
And Deek.
If I die, so do they.
From the rust-eaten toolbox, Emma takes the two best weapons she can find: a screwdriver and a claw hammer.
When she returns upstairs, the pan is overflowing. She twists off the faucet and carries it—a sloshing gallon at least—to the stove and flicks the burner on high. The coils glow red. Splashing the killer with a face full of scalding water is a hell of an opener.
But it’ll take minutes to boil. Minutes she might not have.
Update from Deek: the author has moved again.
DRIVEWAY, he scribbles. HE’S IN THE VAN
The FedEx van.
He adds: DOING SOMETHING
Another disturbing unknown.
The late delivery was a surprise to both sides. She hadn’t expected any packages this evening or this week. She hasn’t ordered anything at all lately. She’s sure of it. But several days ago, despite her protests, she remembers with a flicker of adrenaline . . . Jules did.
Five stars on Amazon, she’d texted gleefully. Batteries included.
An item for Emma’s self-defense.
A stun gun.
He studied the three-pound Amazon parcel addressed to EMMA CARPENTER under the Ford Transit’s dome light.
Then he tossed it aside.
He didn’t know what it was, nor did he care.
He searched the vehicle’s glovebox, then the center console, and finally under the seat. He had to make certain there were no firearms. Sometimes, he’d read on the internet, delivery drivers serving rural areas carried guns. Luckily, Jake Stanford didn’t.
Then he inserted the stolen Ford key, still slick with Jake’s blood, and gave the engine a throaty rev. He shifted into Drive and pulled the van off the gravel driveway, grinding over flowerbeds and rough grass. The suspension bumped and jostled as he idled up behind the garage and parked there. Hiding the vehicle from view.
Just in case any more unplanned guests came down the driveway.
Outside, she hears the engine’s growl subside.
A door shuts.
Silence.
She figures he’s parked the van less than fifty feet from the house, just behind the garage. But even if she could sprint to the vehicle without getting shot, break a window, and rip open the package, the stun gun would require unboxing. Assembly. Reading a manual. The batteries might not even come pre-charged. All things she won’t have time to do while he closes in on her.
“Shit.”
And she can’t tell Deek about it—the author is surely monitoring their whiteboards. She can’t afford to tip him off to it. As she waits for the water to boil on the stove, she notices her neighbor is waving urgently for her attention. He’s written a new message.
Something has changed.
I’M COMING OVER
HAVE TO TRY TALKING TO HIM
No. Horrible idea.
She shakes her head. “Stay home, Deek. Please—”
He insists: HE IDOLIZES ME, MIGHT LISTEN
This stops her mid-breath.
“What?”
In her telescope, he’s still writing: I RECOGNIZE HIM
HE WROTE THAT SHITTY BOOK
Yes. The shitty book that Deek himself recommended two weeks ago. As a joke.
IT’S MY FAULT
I’M SO SORRY
But Emma barely registers his apology. Her mind is racing, struggling to process this jaw-dropping new coincidence.
The killer doesn’t just know Deacon Cowl; Deek personally knows the killer, too, somehow. Can she even trust her neighbor? Something about this revelation alarms her. She can’t put her finger on it.
The old man is still writing frantically. In the uncomfortable silence, the lull between messages, she recalls H. G. Kane’s reedy voice. His quiet desperation. The rage building below his words, seething and white-hot.
Do I sound like a fucking amateur, Emma?
It should all be a joke. People dying for an Amazon review, for imaginary golden stars on the internet. Even the killer’s appearance dares you to laugh. His fedora. His tactical boots and gloves. The cringy sight of a pale, neckbearded white guy strutting around with a Japanese samurai sword in a period-authentic scabbard.
Until an innocent man was sliced to pieces before Emma’s eyes.
Until a body part thudded wetly against the kitchen window.
HIS REAL NAME IS
Deek finishes his message, and when he finally steps away from his whiteboard, the full name of the man who coalesced inside Emma’s bedroom appears one word at a time. The true identity of H. G. Kane reads like a written curse.
HOWARD
GROSVENOR
KLINE