And then, suddenly, there’s a shockingly bright red building, neon, drive-in slots. The Sonic serving tater tots, burgers, shakes . . . but it’s deserted too. Closed. I check my watch; it’s coming up on nine in the morning, so I suppose they’ll open up soon.
The next block has an open diner that looks as if it’s been there for generations, and it’s—for Salah Point, at least—doing good business, with three tables filled that I can see, and a couple of old pickups parked outside on the street. The antique shop that I saw in website pictures is empty, though the painted name survives on the window with a PERMANENTLY CLOSED sign on it.
There’s something else, I realize—a fluorescent orange poster taped to the door of that empty store, and there’s something printed on it in huge, heavy block letters.
WELCOME GINA
I hit the brakes hard enough to jerk us both, and Kez casts me a look before she spots the sign. “Shit,” she says. “Gwen . . . there’s something else on it. I think it’s an envelope.”
I back up and park the Honda at the curb. There’s not a soul on these streets. The only life is across the street at the diner, and I don’t look that way. I feel very exposed. It would be so easy to hit us right here. Rifle shots from a low rooftop, and our brains are on the walls. I have a powerful urge to jam the car in reverse, pull a U-turn, and get the hell out. Because whatever is waiting for us here . . . it’s going to be hard.
I take a deep breath and get out of the car.
The rank smell of the place hits me hard. There’s something rotten here, sulfurous; maybe it’s the distant reek from the old cannery, blowing in from the sea. Humidity clings like wet wool on my skin. I hear Kez open her door, but I don’t look back. I walk steadily across to the orange poster and the white envelope taped on there. I rip it off the sign and open it. Bold cursive writing. No mistakes.
It was your choice to come here. Everything that happens from this point on will be your decision, not mine.
You can leave if you want. Just get in your car and drive home. That’s a choice too. But all choices will have consequences.
This is your first decision to make. I’ll know when you’ve picked up this message. The clock is running, and you have ten minutes to get to me before I think you’re not playing fair. There will be a cost if you delay.
Good luck.
He hasn’t signed it, but he didn’t need to. There’s an underlying strangeness to it that is more of a signature than just a name. It gives me shivers. The writing on the paper is precise, but deeply indented. Written with conviction and force. He’s been careful about the words he chose too; there’s nothing overtly threatening, though the threat overall is there. He could just as easily play it off as a game, a prank. In a town this small, with a man this rich . . . I can’t trust the local police. I’m not sure I can even trust the state police; there’s absolutely nothing I can give them to really make them believe me. It’s all puzzle pieces, and how you put them together.
The other page in the envelope is a printed map of Heartbreak Bay. All the way out on the far end of the horseshoe shore, the lighthouse. He’s put a red X over it.
I hand the note to Kez, and the map. She looks at it in silence, and says, “We’re not going there first, if that’s where he wants us.”
“I don’t think it really matters where we go,” I say. “I think Jonathan’s had a lot of time to think about what we’ll do, and he’ll have planned for it.”
Everything but what I’m about to do, because by this time he must believe that we’re caught. Trapped in his spiderweb of a town. Out of good options.
I take the burner phone I bought out of my pocket and dial home.
“Gwen?” Sam answers so fast that it takes my breath away. The sound of his voice. The reality of him. I feel him here with me as I squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh Jesus, Gwen?”
“I’m here,” I whisper, and then try again, louder. “Sam, I’m okay. Kez is with me. We’re okay.”
“Where are you? Javier is here. We can be on the road in half a minute.”
“You can’t,” I tell him. “Sam, remember I asked you if you’d—you’d look after the kids? In case anything happened?”
“No.” He does remember, he’s just rejecting the question. “We’re coming to get you out of whatever shit you’re in. Listen to me: the man you caught, the homeless man—”
“I know. Leonard Bay is MalusNavis.”
“He’s—” He takes in a breath so deep it sounds painful. “He’s also the kid who came to talk to me at the airfield, Gwen. He called himself Tyler Pharos. I should have put that together, should have told you . . . Pharos is a lighthouse. MalusNavis is a beacon. Fuck. I could have stopped this, I could have—”
“It’s not your fault, Sam.” I feel okay now. Centered. Calm in a way I haven’t been on this long, hellish trip. “I screwed up too. Look, I need you to convince the FBI that Kez and I are tracking a killer that they ought to be after. Look at my computer. Put it together. Get them moving, Sam.”
“Moving where?”
“Salah Point, North Carolina,” I tell him. “The lighthouse on the bay. But we can’t wait for them. And you and Javier need to stay there. If he decides to come after the kids—” I can’t finish that sentence. “Please, Sam. Please do this for me.”
He’s silent for a long, long minute, and then he says, “I will get people to you, Gwen. If I need to lie, I will. But I will get them there. Damn the consequences.” It’s killing him not to be in this with me, I can feel that. It would kill me in just the same way.
“I love you,” I whisper. It sounds shaky. I don’t want to let go, but I know I need to. We’re out of time. Jonathan/MalusNavis was very clear about that.
I open my eyes once I’ve ended the call. I look at the little, anonymous town, the nonexistent traffic, the lack of human faces on the street. It feels . . . empty. This whole town is a spiderweb, and we’re caught already. It’s a long, long road back to anything like civilization.
“Gwen,” Kez says. “Why would he let us find out who he really is? What his real name is?”
I think about that. About the way MalusNavis has closed in on me. Shown his face. Given me everything, even if in indirect and slippery methods. And I think about what Sam just told me: that he talked this young man off a bridge. That might have been false, just another ploy.
But what if it wasn’t? What if, finally, he’s had enough?
This may be his endgame. Either way, it has to be mine.
“Kez,” I say. “Look at the map.”
“What am I looking for?”
“That shows the bay, the lighthouse, and a house, right?” She nods. I reach into the car and pull out the map I drew from the research I did on Jonathan’s cell phone, before I dropped it. “What’s missing?”
“The cannery,” she says. “Maybe it was torn down.”
“Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he left it off because he wants us coming straight for the lighthouse.”
She blows out a frustrated breath. “Jesus. Your mind, Gwen. You scare me sometimes.”