Sincerely,
Doug Sinclair
There was one last page. A draft email addressed to me only a week ago:Dear Kat, Where to start …
That was all. But there was my email address, clear as day in the “To” line. An email I never received. I stared at it for a long time, the page trembling in my hand. Darden had known about Doug and me and, evidently, so had Tim Lyall. Was this why they’d wanted me on the case? It wasn’t insignificant that the email had been saved, and sent on to Tim Lyall, though presumably not to Mark. If Tim operated anything like I did, Mark wouldn’t know any of these details, which was starting to feel a little convenient. Had Darden counted on me to do what they wanted, and quickly, in order to make sure that my relationshipwith Doug didn’t come out? Had they been signaling to Tim Lyall that Blair, Stevenson was mixed up in this already in more ways than one?
I was still staring at the message when my phone pinged in my pocket.Shit—Janine.How long had I been in Tim Lyall’s apartment?
But the text wasn’t from Janine. It was from the same unknown number as the other anonymous threats. Except this message didn’t have any words at all.
It consisted of a single photo. Of Cleo.
It had been taken across the street from her dorm, only her profile as she went inside. At twilight. And then a second message:
Three million. That’s what it will cost for me to keep your secrets. You have 24 hours, or she’s the one who’ll pay.
Yes. Tell me where. Please leave her alone.Just like that, all the advice I’d given to clients over the years—taking their time, not responding, patience, reserve—went right out the window.
I gripped the phone, praying for an answer that never came. It was possible they would send detailed instructions later. Unless whoever was messaging me didn’t actually care that much about the money. That the messages blackmailing me were some kind of ruse, like the ones that had been sent to Doug. These were different from the ones sent to him. But it was possible that, too, was a ploy.
I texted Sergeant McKinney.Can you call me? ASAP.
My phone rang almost instantly. “What is it?”
“I need you to watch Cleo. Can you go to her dorm, follow her if she leaves? Make sure she’s okay?”
“This because of that kid again?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. Because I couldn’t risk mentioning Darden, not yet. “But I’m worried. Very worried.”
Cleo
THIRTY-SIX HOURS GONE
It’s early when I slide carefully out of bed, not even 6:00 a.m. But I’ve already been lying there with my eyes open for what feels like forever. I don’t want to wake Will, don’t want him to leave, not yet. I feel so much better with him here.
But it is light now, reality creeping slowly back. The disturbing texts I stumbled upon on my mom’s laptop last night are all I can think about. I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of my mom doing something terrible. Because between her journal and the texts and her eventually agreeing to turn over the money, it seems like she definitely did something.
It was the picture of the cars that got my mom to agree to pay up. But why? I reach for the laptop, lean back against the bed, and prop it open on my knees. I click back on the thumbnail photo near the top to take a closer look. When I expand it, I recognize my dorm in the background. And there in the back of the frame, that’s me, isn’t it? Headed through the front doors at a distance. After that came the first demand for money. They hadn’t only been threatening my mom. They’d been threatening me.
I close my mom’s texts and start searching for information about Haven House and an incident years ago, something bad. I try every variation of my mom’s name and then only “female” and “girl.” But there are no reports of specific incidents involving any kind of violence or crime and a teenaged girl back then.
What I do find, though, is a rabbit hole of information about Haven House. It’s still up and running, seemingly well funded now—thanks to a generous grant from the Gladys Greene Foundation. It has a decent-looking website and even a virtual tour. But then I find the exposé, published inConnecticut Magazinefive years ago: “Horror House: Rampant Abuse of Girls by Doctors and Staff Persisted for Years at Haven House.” Apparently, a director, Robert Daitch, who ran the facility from the early eighties through the end of the nineties, failed to supervise staff, and buried complaints of sexual and verbal harassment of female “residents”—as if any of the girls had chosen to live there—in order to preserve Haven House’s “stellar reputation” and procure a lucrative position for himself at a private boarding school. He served as a beloved headmaster at Sloan Prep until his death in 2012. Daitch was dead by the time the story was published and even more victims’ stories started flooding in, so there could be no criminal prosecution.
“Hey,” Will murmurs sleepily. “What are you doing on the floor?”
“Reading my mom’s texts,” I say. “Somebody was threatening her.”
“Threatening?”
“Well, asking for money,” I say. “Blackmail.”
“You saw this, just now?”
“I didn’t realize they were on her computer.”
“Blackmailing her about what?”
