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The address on the slip of paper led us to a rural area, down a long private drive to a house that could’ve doubled as a hotel. Everything appeared to be well tended, and yet there was an air of abandonment that hung over the place.
Through the large windows, I could see the plastic sheeting that covered the furniture. Amelia and Oliver had left everything behind when they downsized. Too many memories attached to this place and its contents, I supposed.
I folded my arms against the chill in the morning air and scanned the endless rows of windows for movement. “Do you think he has them in the house?”
“If this is the right place, I think he brought her here because of the lake. Let’s scope out the property, and then we’ll check the buildings.” He closed his door with a soft click.
“You really think he’s gonna kill her?”
“After everything he did leading up to this, I don’t think his goal is to talk out their problems.”
I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that the skinny young man with social anxiety I met in the café, the boy who blushed when he called me pretty, could have murderous intentions.
But if he could hold a woman captive and drugged for days, kidnap an innocent child, and manhandle me into the back of his van, underestimating him based on first impressions would be a dangerous mistake.
I started around the house, noticing the old swing set that matched the photograph on the Kendricks’ wall. I could almost see Hope and Livy giggling as they pumped their legs to soar higher, racing to see who could touch the sky with their feet first.
I looked out at the endless stretch of land, beyond the fenced-in area that must’ve been the garden, to the guesthouse. A black car sat in the driveway.
“Jordan.” I pointed to the car, but then something pulled my attention past the guesthouse to the lake. Movement on the water.
We were too far away to make out the details, but someone was rowing a boat toward the center of the lake.
“I doubt the house cleaner decided to take the boat out on a forty-degree morning,” he said. “Come on.”
We took off toward the lake, skating in the dew-slicked grass as the flat yard dropped into a slope. I nearly lost my footing, but Jordan snagged my arm to rebalance me. He tugged me behind the wooden shed set back from the lake.
I shot him a questioning look, and he whispered, “I saw sunlight reflect off something near his hand. Could be a watch, could be a gun.”
I peered around him at the lake, which was small enough in circumference that it might be more accurate to call it a large pond. The rowboat glided toward the center, ripples expanding from the oars that Hope plunged into the water.
“That’s far enough,” a man said, his voice stretching across the lake to reach us. He rose in front of Hope’s petite frame, back to us, and wrenched her to her feet so hard the boat rocked.
Hope staggered. “Ollie, please don’t do this.”
He ignored her plea as he handed her a black object. “Put this on, zipper facing me.”
Puffs of steam escaped my mouth as my heart galloped in my chest. “What is that? What is he making her put on?”
“I think it’s a weighted vest,” Jordan said, his height allowing him to watch the scene over my head. “If she goes into the water with that on, she won’t be able to swim.” Jordan grabbed his phone and dialed the police.
But they weren’t going to get here in time. Ollie could push her in at any moment, and she would sink to the bottom like a boulder. How far down was it? There was a pond in our hometown that was twenty feet deep in the center—more than deep enough for a person to drown.
I tuned out Jordan’s one-sided conversation with the dispatcher and tried to focus on the events unfolding on the boat.
“I’m sorry for what happened to Livy. I miss her, too, every day,” Hope cried. “But this won’t bring her back.”
Ollie zipped up the vest. “Livy was the only person who understood me, the only person who ever loved me. And she’s gone because of you. You took my whole world from me, so I’m taking your whole world from you.”
“Please. Please don’t hurt my son.”
“That’s up to you.” He pushed her closer to the side of the boat. “Now, climb over and get in.”
Hope’s chest heaved as she stared at the water, and then she curled in on herself and stepped back, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
“Then you don’t love your son any more than you loved Livy.”
“He needs me.”
“He’ll be better off without you.” He shoved her toward the side, and she stumbled and fell forward.
I gasped and grabbed Jordan’s arm, anticipating a splash, but Hope caught herself on the edge, gripping it with both hands as the boat rocked.
Anger tightened Jordan’s expression at the way Ollie manhandled Hope, and he stuffed his phone back into his pocket. “The police are coming.”
“We have to do something.”
“I know. Let me get a better view.” He inched around the shack and reappeared a moment later. “There’s nothing we can use to get out there, no other boats, and the dock doesn’t extend that far.”
“We can swim if we have to.”
“Holly, that water is freezing.”
I would accept hypothermia if it meant Hope could go home to her little boy. Tyler didn’t deserve to lose a mother who loved him, only to land in a foster care system that shuffled him from one neglectful placement to the next until he aged out.
“Maybe I can talk to Ollie, distract him long enough for the police to arrive,” I said.
“No. We don’t know if he has a gun.”
“He won’t shoot me.” I sank more certainty into my voice than I felt. “I’m not his target any more than the other women were, and he didn’t kill them.”
A muscle flexed in his jaw, but he knew there was no other choice. Ollie’s self-control was hanging on by a thread, and it could snap at any moment.
Jordan drew his gun from the holster. “If I see him raise a gun, the conversation’s over.”
“Okay.” Despite the barely forty-degree temperature and the shiver of fear curling around the base of my spine, my palms were sweating as I inched out from behind the shed. “Ollie!”
He locked an arm around Hope’s neck and dragged her in front of him, both of them staggering to find their balance in the unsteady boat.
I held my hands out to show him I wasn’t armed. “It’s me. Holly. Can we talk?”
Ollie stared at me for a beat, confused by my presence, and then he shouted, “There’s nothing to talk about! You shouldn’t even be here!”
“Isn’t this where you were gonna bring me when you tried to put me in your van?”
“No, I was never gonna bring you here. I was gonna come back and let you go as soon as this was over.”
Come back? Had he intended to keep me locked up in the house the police discovered?
I paused a few feet from the shed. “You never planned to hurt me?”
“There was no reason to.”
“You didn’t intend to hurt Dorina or Cami either, did you? But you didn’t know about Cami’s diabetes.”
“I wasn’t there to grab her that night. I was just watching, working things out, but then those guys in the alley . . . they were attacking her.”
“You scared them off and took her.”
He nodded. “But she kept getting sicker, and she was so out of it, she couldn’t tell me what was wrong. I didn’t know how to make her better until I heard you and your friend at the café. I tried to get her medicine from the apartment.”
“You tried to save her, and you came to the hospital to check on her, not to hurt her. Even though you’re angry, you still care about people.”
“People are saying I dumped her in an alley, but I didn’t. I thought she was dead, but I still laid her down gently where I knew she would be found.”
“You have a good heart, Ollie.” I stepped closer to the shore. “Yes, people got hurt, but no one is dead. You were careful not to kill anyone. Please . . . don’t cross that line now.”
He tightened his arm around Hope’s neck, and she cried out. “No, no, she has to pay for what she did.”
“It was an accident,” I said.
“Stop saying that! Everyone keeps repeating that lie!” He bellowed, and I flinched. “If she had let me in the boat instead of leaving me on the shore, Livy would still be alive! I tried to find her in the water. I tried!”
Jordan shifted in the corner of my vision, but I couldn’t look at him. If Ollie knew there was a man behind the shed with a gun trained on him, he might panic.
“Holly, you have to save my little boy.” Hope choked on a sob. “Please, you have to take him, you have to tell him I love him.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to Tyler,” I assured her.
“You can’t let my mom have him. She doesn’t know how to love anyone, and I don’t want that for him. You have to take him, Holly. Please.”
My throat tightened with tears. “Ollie, please let her go. I know you’re hurting, but she doesn’t deserve this.”
“Stop taking her side!” he yelled. “This is her fault, not mine, and there are consequences!”
He released Hope’s neck and shoved her. She toppled over the edge of the boat with a scream, and her body splashed into the water about twenty feet from the shore.
No thrashing, no desperate gasps for air—she just . . . sank.
No!
I kicked off my flats, pulled my sweatshirt and knapsack over my head, and tore through the grass onto the dock, scampering barefoot across the dried, splitting boards.
“Holly, no!” Jordan’s objection breezed past my ears as I jumped off the end of the dock and plunged into the lake. The icy temperature of the water snatched the air from my lungs as it closed over my head.
I thrust toward the surface, breaking through with hair plastered to my face. I dragged in a wet breath.
The sound of shoes pounding on wood interspersed with shouting voices met my ears.
“She deserves to drown like Livy!” Oliver bellowed.
“Swim back, Holly,” Jordan instructed, and I caught a distorted glimpse of him through my hair as he bent over the end of the dock, hand extended. “I’ll pull you out.”
He would heave me out of the water, but he wouldn’t leave my side to rescue Hope while Oliver was still a threat. He would prioritize my safety, and she would die.
“I have to find her,” I said, spitting out water.
“Holly, pl—”
Refilling my lungs, I dove. Bubbles and leaves drifted around me as I swam deeper, searching the cloudy depths. The lake couldn’t be that deep.
Darkness surrounded me, the water seeming to squeeze my throat and chest until they burned for the oxygen. It was a familiar, terrifying sensation, being deprived of air—the pressure in my head, the fire in my chest, the dots dancing in my vision.
Panic burned through me. I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t brave enough to . . .
Ghostly fingers reached out of the murkiness ahead of me and grasped at my hair. The last of my breath escaped my mouth in a startled cloud of bubbles.
Hope.
She was only feet in front of me, but I was out of air. I would have to come back for her. Frantic, I kicked upward. The distance stretched, and flames of desperation licked through my chest with every second, engulfing me in a fire that water couldn’t extinguish.
I wasn’t going to make it. I was too deep, and the water was thickening to gelatin, slowing my movements. Panic crashed into me again, and I wanted to open my mouth and gasp, but my brain locked my lips together.
Breathe and you die, dropped into the chaos of my thoughts.
God, please, please, please.
My muscles started to cramp from the cold, and I barely managed to break free of the water. I sucked in a breath, but my spasming lungs hacked it back out.
Jordan’s voice stretched over the distance, asking if I was all right, begging me to get out of the water.
“I found her,” I choked out.
And now I had to swim back down into liquid terror to save her. Tremors racked my body, as much from the cold as from the fear, but I dove.
The last thing I heard before going under was a creak, followed by Jordan’s harsh warning. “Stop! If your feet leave that boat . . .”
A muffled bang, like a gunshot, resounded above the surface, and then a body crashed into the water above me. My heart skipped, but I didn’t slow my descent.
By the time I reached Hope, she was limp on the bottom, and the bubbles coming from her nose were almost nonexistent. I turned her back toward me and unzipped the vest, sliding it from her arms.
The weight sank, stirring up sediment, and I pushed her upward, praying it wasn’t too late.
Someone snaked through the brown water toward me. Ollie. I tried to swim away from him, but he snagged my foot. A knife appeared in his other hand.
I kicked, frantic, my attention swiveling between him and the sweet oxygen my lungs ached for.
Another figure peeled through the water and collided with Ollie. The two men disappeared in a flurry of bubbles. I launched upward. Jordan could take care of himself.
I hope.
I bobbed to the surface a few feet from Hope, and relief flooded me when I found her coughing and sputtering, her chin dipping in and out of the water.
“Come on.” I paddled toward the edge of the lake with her alongside me, my legs and arms threatening to seize up from the cold. Hope straightened when the bottom of the lake rose up to meet our feet, and she staggered forward toward the shore, clawing her way into the grass.
I lingered in the shallows, shivering and exhausted, and stared at the glassy surface of the lake. Seconds passed, the stillness sinking fear deeper into my bones.
Where was Jordan?
The mirrored surface of the lake rippled, and I tensed with anticipation, but the mop of dark hair that emerged didn’t belong to my friend.
Ollie pawed at the side of the boat, gasping as he pulled himself up and over. He landed on the bottom with a wet thud.
I hadn’t seen the knife in his hand. Where was the knife?
A horrifying possibility struck me, and I looked back at the water, half-expecting to see blood bubbling to the surface. What if he’d stabbed Jordan and left him to bleed out or drown on the bottom of the lake?
I shouldn’t have left him down there alone. I needed to go back for him. My feet slid in the muck as I inched further from the shore, but before I could venture deeper, Jordan surfaced in a spray of water.
My cry of relief twisted into a scream when Ollie grabbed one of the oars and swung it at Jordan’s head. Jordan dipped back under, and the thick wooden oar skipped off the water. The boat sloshed from Ollie’s efforts, and he staggered, letting out a frustrated growl.
He plunged both oars into the water and began to row, the boat turning toward the patch of shore where Hope and I huddled.
Jordan bobbed up again and tracked the movement of the boat. “Go, Holly!”
Heart in my throat, I scrambled out of the lake, slipping and dragging myself through mud and algae. I urged my body to move faster, but my limbs were heavy and sluggish.
I collapsed on top of Hope, who had curled into the fetal position, her entire body trembling. As much as my body wanted to curl into a ball and rest alongside her, I knew we would die—either by Ollie’s hand or hypothermia.
“Get up. We h-have to g-get up.”
Grabbing my discarded sweatshirt, I stumbled to my feet and pulled at Hope’s arms and clothes, trying to peel her off the ground before it was too late.