“Stay back!” he shouted at Annie, but she ignored him, rounding the tree to find the woman with her head twisted away, long fair hair fanning over her face and the mossy ground around her.
Annie’s hands flew to her mouth.
Jake stepped around the woman and knelt beside her, sweeping the hair away from her face.
All-too-familiar purple bruises ran the length of her neck, and a sound escaped Annie’s lips, like that of a dog who had been struck.
Though she longed to squeeze her eyes shut, to turn and run, she could do nothing but stand and stare at the lifeless face of the woman Daniel had chosen over her.
Chapter 25ANNIE
What a strange sensation it was, to be numb both inside and out.
The hands in Annie’s lap did not feel like her own, the feet in her shoes seemed miles away, and between her ears was only a cottony sense of disbelief as she sat in the passenger seat of the speeding police cruiser.
They flew down Main Street, sirens blazing and lights flashing—people on the sidewalk stopping to stare at the blur of color and sound. Annie met the eyes of some, envying their confusion and the ignorance that would be stolen from them soon enough, while Jake stared straight ahead, focused and silent as he gripped the steering wheel in hands clamped like vises.
The digital clock on the dashboard showed that fifty-five minutes had passed since they’d discovered Jamie’s body in the woods, but it felt longer to Annie as she replayed the scene over and over in her mind, whirling through details she’d never be able to forget.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the cool glass of the window.
Jake had managed to flip a switch that she hadn’t, forcing himself into work mode as he’d glanced up through the fir boughs shading Jamie’s body, and asked the pressing question out loud.
“How long do you think she’s been back here?”
Hours. The word stuck tight in Annie’s throat, and she hadn’t been able to answer.Only hours.After all, she herself had undoubtedly been one of the last people to witness Jamie Boyd alive, just the night before.
Annie had finally turned her lamp off at eleven thirty and was on the verge of drifting to sleep when she heard running footfalls on the gravel road through the open window. She’d made it to the sill and had searched the road beyond the yellow pool of garage light flooding the driveway, but she had been too late to catch sight of Jamie.
Still, she knew in her gut that it could have been no one else. Even her footsteps sounded peppy as she jogged up the road toward the boathouse. Toward Daniel. Jamie Boyd had been alive and well at midnight last night, and now she was dead.
“I have to get out of these clothes,” Jake muttered, and Annie forced her eyes open, leaning her head away from the comforting cold of the glass. “Let’s swing by my place. I’ll change, then we can start making calls.”
Annie nodded, searching Jake’s face as he drove, wondering if he felt as numb as she did in this moment.
His shirt and shorts were damp and muddy. He had fallen into the lake when he shoved the skiff back out into the water, stumbling forward and submerging himself up to the chest before climbing in, dripping wet. It was understandable, given the circumstances. Annie had barely managed to keep her own legs from buckling beneath her as she clambered aboard.
Jake had rowed them back toward the boathouse with ferocious speed—the veins in his arms and neck bulging with effort—while Annie sat across from him, her muscles tensed as she tried to stop the uncontrollable shivering that persisted in her arms and legs despite the warm day.
Now, the shivering had stopped, but even with the miles between her and the gruesome scene in the woods, even safe in the cruiser with Jake, she already knew that she would remember those awful minutes in that little clearing for the rest of her life. That scene would land in thesame mental file of nightmare material as the hiker in the tent and the woman on the rocks.
Jake yanked the steering wheel to the right and the cruiser revved up the steep grade behind the bed-and-breakfast. At the top, a small white bungalow peeked out over the hillside from a grove of black firs, and Jake screeched to a stop in the sharply sloped driveway.
“I’ll be ten minutes,” he said, unbuckling. “You can come in if you want.”
Annie didn’t hesitate, quickly unfastening her own seat belt and following him inside. She didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want silence or space to think.
Jake jogged up the porch steps, peeling off his wet shirt as he climbed and slinging it over his shoulder. He held the squeaking front door open for Annie, who stepped inside ahead of him.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said. “We’ve gotta move. Get word to the state that this guy’s still active and get them back down here as soon as possible.”
Jake strode through the kitchen, dropping his wet shirt on the counter before disappearing into a back room.
Annie glanced around. The place looked like Jake, tidy, but quirky, with old-fashioned swiveling barstools at the counter and an antiquated linoleum floor. Coffee mugs with various sports emblems were lined up on the windowsill, and a clock shaped like a black cat hung on the wall, its tail ticking back and forth with the passing seconds.
“Are there any messages?” Jake called from the back room.
Annie found the answering machine beside the sink. The red light was blinking with an unheard message.
