The blindfold clogs her hot tears.

She’s grateful there’s no gag, because there’s a good chance she might throw up. But if they plan to drop her to her death, maybe choking on her own vomit would be preferable.

Somehow not seeing what she’s dangling over is worse than seeing. Much worse. She can imagine the drop goes on forever and at any moment she could plunge face-first into the dark, her bound wrists depriving her of even the most desperate of last-minute attempts to break her fall with her arms.

They think she’s weak.

Should she be surprised? She’s been a disappointment to everyone. Try as she might, every night before she goes to sleep she sees the expression on her parents’ faces when they realized she was stealing pain pills from her grandmother’s hospice bed. She sees the look on Jordy’s smug, satisfied face every time she came crawling back, begging for forgiveness. Again.

All her life she’s been weak. Up until recently, she’s only pretended to fight the urge. Only made promises to get her demons under control.

When they let her go, that will change.

Now she’ll be strong.

What other choice does she have?

It won’t last forever, whatever this torture is. They’re trying to find out what she knows, find out what she told the cops. And she didn’t tell them anything, at least not in the way they assume.

But this current game will be followed by something worse. Something she might not survive.

A sense of peace comes over her.

She realizes, for the first time in her life, that deciding to be strong doesn’t mean you get to decide what you’ll endure and when.

All her life she’s begged and pleaded and made empty threats to the people who stood in her way. The only way to get through what lies ahead with her dignity intact is to be the opposite of that person. It’s her only advantage. If she transforms herself into a person they don’t recognize, then they won’t know how to control her.

Silence.

The word’s always made her feel anxious before. Now it fills her with calm.

She can still talk, but only to herself.

Someone will find it, she tells herself. They have to. They’ve got cameras. They’ll find it, and then they’ll know everything. Even if I’m gone by then.

Just as Lacey Shannon starts to turn these words into a mantra, another rock cracks against the cliff face nearby and begins its long, echoing plummet.

22

Luke announced the week before that he was sick of cards, so he and the guys who’ve been gathering at his house every Saturday since Charlotte left have started sampling board games. So far Monopoly’s been the only one to meet with their collective approval, but they’re still hunting for alternates.

Scattergories and Cards Against Humanity are out. Both made them feel like bougie married couples in the big city who needed giant glasses of merlot to do spit takes with—not four dudes, three with criminal records, brought together just a few months earlier by the world’s strangest hunt for a serial killer.

When Trev Rucker, a wiry, heavily tattooed former marine sniper, walks through the door of Luke’s house holding up a Battleship box and sporting the most eager smile Luke’s ever seen on the guy, Martin Cahill, the group’s resident father figure, laughs so hard he literally doubles over where he’s standing in the door to Luke’s kitchen. Marty’s laughing a lot easier than he has these past few weeks. Luke’s not surprised. If anyone’s as relieved as he is that Charley’s coming soon, it’s the man who’s always been the closest thing Charley’s had to a real, loving dad.

Rucker’s good buddy Dave Brasher—who’s already parked in front of Luke’s TV with a root beer and the remote he’s just used to mute an episode of some reality show about truck accidents in the snow—turns his head to see what all the fuss is about. His silent laughter causes his giant body to shake like a sleeping dog trying to slough off flies.

“What?” Rucker whines.

“It’s a two-person game, Trev,” Luke says.

“And you’re a goddamn marine,” Martin manages between cackles.

“Dishonorably discharged,” Rucker curses as he tosses the game onto the sofa beside Brasher. “And I didn’t serve on a goddamn battleship, all right? Shut up, all of you. What then, charades?”

Luke takes a seat at the dining room table Charlotte made him buy at a flea market in Paso Robles right before she left. She said the ring marks on the hardwood gave it character. When he started getting antsy before her departure, she made him promise they’d refinish it together once she was back. Make it a project. Something to look forward to. Now that he knows she’s OK, his fingers aren’t sweaty when he runs them over the tabletop. But still, he wants her home.

“Maybe we don’t need a game to cut the tension tonight,” Luke says.

Marty takes a seat next to Luke. “I didn’t think we were trying to cut the tension so much as just . . . you know, trying to be friends, given how hard that is for some of us.”

“I know how to make friends.” Luke gestures at all of them.

“Learning and knowing are different things,” Marty says.

“Thanks, Buddha.”

“More like Oprah.” Brasher rises from the sofa as if it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, which given his formidable size, it just might be.