My blood runs cold. I’ve never seen that woman before in my life.
Numbly, I climb back into the car as Bertram answers the call.
Am I losing my mind? I remember Erin as a slight brunette with green eyes and fair skin. Nothing at all like the woman on the screen.
But then I hear the voice coming through the Bluetooth speaker in Bertram’s car, and that is the voice of the Erin Casimir I know.
She says, “Hello, Bertram.”
Once again, the blood drains from his face. His lips struggle with the word, but when he finally spits it out, some of the millions of pieces come snapping into place. “Annie.”
Twenty-Three
“Hello, Margaux,” Annie says, ignoring Bertram’s bewildered greeting. “I’ve just seen the news this morning. It looks like you’re being charged with my murder. Congratulations, that’s quite an accomplishment. Bertram has been trying to catch me for years. He even staged a fake engagement to try to trap me.”
The blood all over her apartment. The real Erin’s face on Bertram’s phone—she is calling from the real Erin’s number. But how?
“What have you done with my sister?” Bertram demands, suddenly snapping out of his daze. “She has nothing to do with this.”
“Doesn’t she?” Erin—Annie—responds. “We’re all just sisters and brothers here, aren’t we?”
“Cut the bullshit,” he rasps. “You framed Margaux for your murder just to get at me? Why?”
“I didn’t frame anyone,” she says coolly. “How was I to know she was going to show up at my little hideaway this morning? Actually, she ruined my plans by intruding before I had a chance to clean the place up.” Everything was lies.
Mr. X won’t believe it when I tell him.
I open my mouth to speak, but Bertram stops me with a hand on my wrist and a shake of his head. It’s futile, he’s telling me. Whatever she says is going to be a trap. I nod because I know that he’s right, and I don’t try to stop him when he hangs up.
Annie is too good. She had me doubting my own marriage. She’s unlike any suspect I’ve ever faced because—well, I haven’t exactly faced her. She’s been pulling all of her strings from the shadows.
“We have to find a way to get in touch with my brother,” I say. “I can encrypt my phone to evade the police, and then he’ll know how to prove that Annie’s alive, no matter where she’s hiding.”
But Bertram’s mind is elsewhere. “Could she have spoofed my sister’s number, or does she have her? If she has her, we have to get to them before—”
“We will,” I say.
Before Bertram can reply, the phone rings again. “Don’t hang up,” Annie says, with playful glee. “There’s someone here who wants to speak with you.”
“Mom?” Collette’s voice is tight, the way it gets when she’s holding back tears.
“Collette.” I grab the phone. I want to scream. To run to her. To beg her to tell me where she is so that I can fix this. But I know that’s what Annie wants, and that it will onlymake things worse. So I keep my voice calm, even as every nerve in my body is on fire. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
“Mom, you have to come and meet us. Everything will be okay if you just come.” Again, her voice, but not her words.
I look at Bertram, his wide eyes mirroring my own terror. Annie has his sister and she has my daughter. Bertram kept his parents and sister at a distance—I realize now—to protect them from danger. I stupidly slept under the same roof as my daughter. Even more stupidly, I love her, a fact that I’ve never been able to conceal from anyone, much less my enemies. If I really loved her, I should have forfeited her. Never told Waylen I was pregnant, sealed her birth records in a closed adoption and never looked back.
But it wouldn’t have mattered. The past always comes back to find out. And the dangers of this world always know how to hunt us down.
“Where are you?” I ask Collette, still maintaining my calm voice, even as I feel my whole body go hot with fear, my pulse thudding in my temples. If a single hair on her head is harmed, Annie won’t need to frame me for her murder. I’ll gladly go to prison for the rest of my life for what I’ll do.
In response, a song comes blaring through the phone’s speaker, tinny and echoing, like someone is holding a device up against their phone. I recognize it immediately. A song that tormented me throughout my childhood. A song the other kids sang as I sprinted away from them, and wrote in Wite-Out on my locker, and scrawled on my notebooks. That is, until I moved away to where no one knew what had happened to me.
…The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn
Burn, motherfucker, burn…
