Riley drives, keeping tight to the raid van as a mile of chain-link fence zips by on their left. Coils of barbed wire float on top, their tines catching the spectral light; they flash like a predator baring its teeth. This is it. Rowan feels herself pitch forward as they begin the steady descent down a road that gives the illusion of leading straight into the lake. She keeps her eyes trained on the lighthouse, her gaze zeroing in on the third-story window where she knows the Violent Crime Task Force has set up shop. She imagines Axel waking up there the other morning and peering out to discover plumes of red on the rooftop of the tannery across the expanse of frosted grass, which he’d shared with them while still at Eddie’s house.
“That was fucked up … in there.” Riley’s focus is intense and trained on the road. “Sixteen years on this job and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Rowan pauses and knows she is referring to the DIY-taxidermied woman on the couch. She’s certain that in their combined years of crawling around crime scenes, they’ve never encountered anything like that.
“I know that wasn’t easy for him,” starts Riley, and Rowan realizes she must be talking about Axel when she adds: “Going back there.”
Back to Rainbow Row, she means. For as long as she’s known him, Axel has vehemently ignored any connection to his neighborhood of origin, acting as though his life only began at age eighteen when he finally left that row of ramshackle houses.
A thought enters Rowan’s mind, not for the first time since they got in the Impala together. Over the years, she and Riley have worked countless deaths and seen each other at different law enforcement–related events. But today is the first time she’s ever been alone with the woman with whom Axel spends the majority of his time. They work alongside each other forty to sixty hours a week, spar at Silva’s gym a few hours more. Amanda Riley has been tangled up with Axel in so many ways, she has become an essential thread in the fabric of his existence. If Rowan’s being completely honest with herself, she feels like a fraud in Riley’s presence, riddled with the fear that she’ll be found out for not knowing her husband as well as Riley does.
The words come out before she’s had a moment to think them through. “Thank you.”
One perfect eyebrow arches. A constellation of dimples appears in the other woman’s chin as she works her mouth into a discerning frown. “For what?”
“For … always being there for him. God knows I haven’t been. I was … fighting my own demons, I guess.” She summons to mind the obituary of Katelynn Diggory and wonders where it’s gone to. Now that she’s finally communicated to Axel the hold it’s had on her all these years, she feels somewhat free of it. She did not murder that girl. And yet … if it hadn’t been for her, Katelynn might still be alive, in her thirties now, with a career and maybe kids and sharing her life with someone.
Tears well in her eyes.
“Hey.” The strength of Riley’s voice makes her sit up straighter. “Don’t apologize for how you grieve. Your daughter’s been missing. That’s heavy.”
Rowan sets her jaw. “So has his,” she says.
Riley nods. She opens her mouth as though to say something reassuring, but apparently thinks better of it. Rowan knows from Axel that a primary rule of police work is to never make promises. Still, she wishes Riley would give her a sliver of hope to hold on to, even if it isn’t real.
The road curves to the right, depositing them at the base of the hill. The old tannery building fills the whole windshield. From down here, Rowan can just barely see the plumes of red.
Roses? Why would anyone plant a rose garden all the way up there?
Eddie’s green Ford Explorer is parked at the bottom. They coast to a stop beside it and wait for the sliding door of the raid van to open before getting out. Rowan climbs out of the Impala and stands next to Axel, who is still dressed in his SWAT gear. The other team members regard her but say nothing. They know better than to tell her to get back in the vehicle.
Kole’s voice blares over a megaphone. “Edward Blum, this is Sergeant Nikolai Kole of the Black Harbor Police Department. Please come out with your hands up. We know you’re inside.”
Rowan’s eyes ricochet from the factory’s double doors to the windows, some of which bear the entry wounds of rocks smashing through their panes. There isn’t a flicker of movement from inside, and yet, all around her, the world rebels. Leaves rip from their branches and behind them, the lake throws punches at the half-sunk piers. The wind is bullish and sharp, biting at patches of exposed skin. Tendrils of hair slash across her face, and she imagines she must look like a reflection in a broken mirror. This is it—a do or die moment. Bring her daughter home, or die trying.
Life isn’t worth living without Chloe. She’s witnessed that firsthand these past days that she’s been gone.
You’ll love me more when I’m dead.
Oh no, darling girl. I need you beside me, breathing, laughing, just simply being. That is what she will tell Chloe if she is lucky enough to speak to her again, if her words don’t fall on deaf, dead ears.
She takes a step forward. Axel grabs her bicep and pulls her against him. “Give him a minute,” he says so quietly, she’s sure she’s the only person who can hear him.
“Edward Taylor Blum, this is the Black Harbor Police Department. Please surrender the girl and come out with your hands up. You have ten seconds. Ten … nine…” Kole begins the countdown.
“She’s in there,” she whispers to Axel. “She has to be.”
“I know.” He squeezes her arm tighter. A reassurance or a warning, she cannot discern.
“Five … four…”
What is that, now, that’s just appeared on the rooftop? A man emerges. He’s wearing a canvas jacket, no hat. He looks almost bald from down here, but for the light stubble that makes a shadow on his scalp. He reaches behind him and yanks a smaller person forward.
“Chloe!” Her daughter’s name tears from Rowan’s throat before she can swallow it back.
The girl on the rooftop is silent. Dressed in black from head to heel, her face betrays nothing—not fear nor recognition, not even acknowledgment of the people armed and gathered on her behalf.
She leans toward them at a forty-five-degree angle. Rowan feels her brows knit. How can this be? She almost looks as though she is floating, levitating from the ledge.
“Leave us, or I let go,” Eddie calls down to them, and that’s when horror takes up residency in Rowan’s bones. Chloe isn’t floating; she’s being restrained. A collar is fitted around her neck, connected to the chain he grasps in his right hand. All he has to do is release, and she will plummet forty or more feet below.
“No one will hurt you,” Kole calls to him. “We just want to talk—”
“Bullshit!” Eddie spits.
Rowan’s stomach flips when Eddie jerks back on the chain. Chloe sways in the wind. How is she not crying? How is she not terrified?
“I know you’ve been to my house, yeah? We watched you from up here. You saw dear old Mom? The woman who promised I’d never leave Black Harbor. The woman who blamed me for living when my sister didn’t.” Eddie shakes his head. “No thank you, gentlemen. I don’t really care to spend the rest of my life locked up in a padded room.”
“Things don’t have to end badly for anyone, Eddie,” explains Kole. “We can get you help.”
Eddie’s quiet for a minute, surveying the crowd that has gathered. Then, his gaze lands on Rowan. She feels it like a barrage of termites burrowing under her skin.
“Mr. and Mrs. Winthorp,” he projects, finally, for all to hear. One hand clenches Chloe’s chain while the other points at Rowan and Axel. “Why don’t you come up and see my rose garden.”