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Her eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and she began to be able to make out the silhouette of the car. It was not Ryan’s Tacoma. It was not a pickup truck, at all. It was something much sleeker, much lower set.

Something like a sports car.

Who would be here? Who even knew they had come to their lake house, or where it was?

She remembered her conversation with Ben Cox.

Chalmers Pond. Up past Bethel.

That sounds ideal. You need a break.

Was it Ben? And where were Ryan and the kids? What had he done to them?

What did Ben drive? It was some kind of BMW, she was pretty sure. She’d seen him in it, and she’d recognize the car if she could get a good look. She picked up her phone and turned on the flashlight.

And then, from the kitchen, she heard the sound of the back door opening.

Carl’s Porsche

Mary held up her phone, the flashlight pressed to the window.

It was not a BMW.

It was not Ben’s car.

It was a brand-new Porsche. She had no idea what model it was, but she knew it was brand new, and she knew it was a Porsche.

Because she had seen it in Barrow, and Otis had told her all about it. How fast it went from zero to sixty, how many cylinders it had, how much it cost.

I know the driver, she said.

Really? Do you think he’d give me a ride?

She thought he would, but she wasn’t going to ask. It was too awkward. She didn’t really want to ask her high-school boyfriend to give her son a ride in his Porsche.

Because the car parked next to her Audi, in the driveway of her lake house, belonged to Carl Langton.

Carl Langton, who knew where her lake house was. This was not the first time he had parked there; thirty years ago he had driven up with some of their friends in his maroon Volvo station wagon.

What was he doing here? How had he known she was here? And why – assuming he had – had he cut the power to the house?

Had it been him, all along? The letters? Wally? Had Ryan’s instincts been right, after all?

It made no sense; Dylan had posted the photo. He had done all this.

But now her husband and kids were missing, and Carl was here.

She stifled a sob. If this was Carl, then he would have planned this with all the meticulousness and intelligence and attention to detail that had made him so successful in the other areas of his life.

She was powerless to stop it.

But she had to try. Maybe her children and Ryan were still alive, locked up somewhere. If she could find them, she could save them.

The lake house was small. A corridor led from the front door to a kitchen at the back. On one side was the room she was in; on the other were two bedrooms. There was no upstairs.

She had not heard the front door open, nor had she seen him when she shone the light outside. The electrical panel was in a cupboard off the kitchen, so, if Carl had cut the power, then he must have come in the back door. The only way out, then, was through the front. Her car keys were in the kitchen so she could not drive away, but she could run away. She had no idea how far she would get, but she was pretty sure she could lose herself in the darkness of the forest that surrounded them. She had the advantage of knowing the area.

Her best option was to go to another house, find the key – because everybody around here left a key somewhere – and hide out there. In the morning she would figure out what to do, because unless Carl searched every single house in the vicinity, she should be safe. Even if he did, she would hear him coming and be able to move off in the darkness.