7:10 P.M.
Miranda came to with a splitting headache. Disoriented, she looked around her. She was on the floor, propped against the wall of a small, plain bedroom. Bed turned down. Water and a plate of cookies on the night table. Lamp burning, nice and cozy.
Where was she? She brought a hand to her head; it came back sticky with blood. Miranda gazed at the red staining her fingers.
And remembered. Summer calling … a woman ready to step forward … turning to ask the woman’s name—
Cathy.
Summer was Cathy from all those years ago. But having been right brought her no satisfaction.
She had to get out of here.
Miranda reached for her phone, only to find it wasn’t in her pocket. Of course it wasn’t; Summer had thought of that. Miranda got cautiously to her feet, head throbbing with every move. She crossed to the closed door, grabbed the knob, and twisted.
Locked. She was locked in.
She jiggled the knob, just to make sure, then heard footsteps from the hallway beyond. “Help!” she called. “I’m hurt and can’t get out!”
Silence. The sound of soft breathing.
Summer.
“I know it’s you, Summer. Open the door. Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She sounded despondent. “How’s your head?”
“It hurts. I think I need stitches.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just let me out.” She jiggled the knob again. “Please Summer.”
“I can’t do that, Miranda. I’m really sorry, I didn’t want to hit you.”
“Then why did you?”
“You left me no choice. I saw the printout.”
“The printout? What—”
The age regression of Summer. How had she … She’d forgotten her jacket in the booth at the bar.… It must have fallen out of her pocket.
Stupid, Miranda. Careless.
Miranda breathed deeply, willing her racing heart to slow, trying to clear her mind.
Think, Miranda. She has a plan. What is it? Figure a way out.
“I know you’re angry at me. And I’m so sorry.” She leaned her forehead on the door. “I tried to get help, I did. No one believed me.”
“I know,” Summer said softly. “I’m not angry with you. I was for a long time, but then I learned the truth…”
Her voice sounded muffled, as if she also had her face pressed close to the door.
“Now I know you’re a victim, just like me.”
A victim. She used to be. But not anymore. “Then why are you doing this? I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“Then why’d you hit me?”
“So you couldn’t stop me.”
Miranda’s mouth went dry. “Stop you from what?”
“Don’t you want to hear what happened that night, after you got away? Haven’t you wondered all these years?”
She had. So often. But now, a part of her didn’t want to know. “I was so afraid you were … that he’d killed you. I always hoped you were alive, Cathy.”
A soft sob came from the other side of the door. “But he did kill me. They killed me. You understand, don’t you, Randi?”
“Yes,” she whispered, the word coming out a croak.
“Because he did the same to you.”
She pressed her palm against the door. “That night … after I ran, what did he do?”
“Lost it … just went totally off the rails. I screamed and screamed, I couldn’t stop … so he hit me until I did.”
The screams she’d heard that night, the ones that echoed in her head for years. Goose bumps raced up her arms.
“When I woke up, I didn’t know where we were but I learned it was his family’s summer place. On Lake Pontchartrain. I was pretty messed up.… He was pacing … scared about what was going to happen to him.”
Summer’s voice dipped even lower; Miranda pressed closer to the door. “His dad showed up, slapped his face. I thought he was there to save me…”
She choked on the words; Miranda finished the thought for her. “But he was there to save his son.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I was a problem to be taken care of.”
“His dad, he wasn’t alone, was he?”
“No. He had two cops with him.”
“Chief Buddy Cadwell,” Miranda said, heart hurting. “And Officer Clint Wheeler.”
“Yes.” She paused, as if collecting her thoughts. “His dad offered me money to keep quiet. He said no one would believe me, I was just a tramp. Trash, same as you were. Nobody was going to believe us making accusations against a fine young man like his son.”
“How much money,?” Miranda asked, voice tight. “What was your silence worth to them?”
“Five thousand dollars. It seemed like a fortune back then.”
“So you took it.”
“I convinced myself the money would make up for what he did to me. I convinced myself I’d forget, move on.”
“But you couldn’t?”
“Did you?”
No, Miranda acknowledged silently. That night, its aftermath, had colored every moment, every decision of the past fourteen years.
Anger swelled up in her. It tasted bitter against her tongue. She hated feeling this way—discounted and overlooked, betrayed in the most elemental way.
Let it go, Miranda. Help Cathy let it go, too.
“It’s done,” Miranda said. “It’s over. We have to move on.”
“I tried. I can’t.” Her voice cracked. “I’m finishing this.”
She meant to kill Buddy. And Ian Stark. “Listen to me, Summer … Cathy,” she corrected, “we can beat them. You and me, together.”
“No, nothing’s changed. They have the money and the power and we don’t.”
“We’re not naive girls anymore. We’re strong, smart women. People will listen.”
Summer was crying. Miranda’s heart wrenched at the broken sound. “We need to let it go, Summer. Both of us.”
“That accident you asked me about, the one that took my face? That was no accident, Miranda. I wanted to die. Every day, I’d drive past that wall and imagine driving into it … pressing down the accelerator and pointing my car at it.”
She paused and cleared her throat, then went on. “But I didn’t die. Instead I woke up in the hospital a mangled mess. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be dead. They were.”
Miranda brought a hand to her mouth to hold back a cry. It hurt. To know the pain this woman she’d grown to care about had suffered, how she still suffered.
“What justice would there be in me dying?” she continued. “I was the victim, they were the monsters.”
“Let me help you, Summer.”
Summer went on as if she hadn’t heard her. “That’s how I fought my way back, through brutal surgeries and physical therapies. Every minute was torture, but I made it through by focusing on my goal. Justice, Miranda. For me and you and every girl they hurt.”
“You were a victim. But you don’t have to be anymore. Don’t let them make you a murderer.”
“That’s already done. I have two left, that’s all.”
She had to stop her. But how?
“I’ve got to go now, Miranda. You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure they know where you are.”
“Wait!” Miranda cried, grasping for a way to stall her. “I have to know—were you trying to set me up? Is that why you planted the news clipping and the water bottle?”
“No!” Her voice shook. “My plan was never to have you take the fall for this. I wanted you personally involved, because I wanted you to be on my side. I needed your help bringing the truth to light. I knew you wouldn’t back down until that happened. Even if I was caught or died before I made them all pay … you would keep on until everyone knew the whole truth.”
She paused a moment. When she went on, her voice vibrated with emotion. “And you didn’t know about Stark, that it was him.… You deserved to know.”
“You’re the one who put his strongbox on my porch.”
“Yes. I saw it in his closet.”
“How did you know what was in it? It must have been locked.”
“It was. I didn’t know but I suspected … no, I hoped, so I took it. And when the time was right, I got it to you.”
She fell silent a moment before continuing. “What was in it, Miranda? I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were right. Everything he needed to escape and start a new life.”
“And Cadwell did nothing? That son of a bitch.”
Summer never opened the box. That meant Miranda had been wrong about one thing. “You didn’t plant the button.”
“What button?”
“The one from the shirt I was wearing that night.” Her voice shook. “It was in the strongbox. He saved it all those years.”
Why’d he keep it? Miranda felt sick to her stomach. Did he look at it, touch it? In those moments, did he wonder what his life would have been like if she hadn’t escaped? Did he regret going for food and leaving them alone? Did he long to finish what he’d begun?
Summer broke into her thoughts. “At the bar today, I heard that Ian Stark’s planning a memorial garden for his fallen son, with a statue and everything. And what do we get?” Her voice hardened. “You know what, that’s just not going to happen. I’m going to make sure it doesn’t.”
“Wheeler,” Miranda said quickly. “How did you manage to surprise him that way?”
“That was no surprise. Old Clint used to come around the bar. I befriended him. In fact, I took to bringing him by a cold six-pack now and then.”
Delivery day, Miranda remembered. When she talked to Summer the day Wheeler died, that’s what she had called it.
“You brought him the beer, then shot him in the back of the head.”
“Yup. I’m not going to be as subtle with President Stark and Chief Cadwell. They need to know how much we suffered.”
“Don’t do this, Summer! We’ll go together … to the Sheriff’s Office, we’ll tell them everything and this time they’ll believe us!”
“We already talked about this. No. I have other plans.”
“It’s different now. We’re different. Please … Cathy, listen to me! They’ll lose everything!”
“The way we lost everything?” Her voice turned cold and hard. “I listened then, I’m not going to now. Good-bye, Miranda.”
“No! Wait … Summer!” She pounded on the door. “If we step forward other women will, too! They’ll know they’re not alone!” She pounded again. “There’s power in the truth! I believe that.… Please … please, don’t do this!”
But Summer was already gone.