Brooklyn paused, and maintaining eye contact seemed a great effort. Her voice wavered as she said, “I ran.”
“Did you call the police?”
“As soon as I was a safe distance, of course I did.”
“You didn’t warn Sam?” There was no hiding the edge to my voice.
“Why would I? Carver was after me, not him.” Her tone became dismissive. “I’m still not sure Carver’s the reason Sam disappeared. Sam’s obviously dealing with his own problems.”
The anger swelled suddenly, hot in my chest. It still wasn’t hatred, but it was closer. Before this happened, I would never have left Sam behind, especially without warning him. I would have gone to my death protecting him. If I were being honest, I was pretty sure the same was true now.
“You should’ve warned him.”
Brooklyn refreshed her drink. When she spoke again, she slurred. “I slept with him too. Carver.” Her face flushed, I guessed more from the alcohol than embarrassment. “Just once. It’s not like with—” she choked back my husband’s name. “Anyway, I guess I have a type. Unattainable men. Just didn’t think I’d also pick a homicidal one.”
Then Brooklyn stood, which was a production. When she left the room, the alcohol and her injuries made her steps slow and wobbly. She returned a few minutes later with a small stack of photos. I thought they might be pictures of her with Sam, but then I noticed that two of the photos were starting to yellow around the edges.
“I took these from him.” She offered the photos to me. When I didn’t accept them, she pressed them into my hand. “I knew he’d been in prison for killing a girl, but the way he told it, he was innocent. Plus he was only eighteen or nineteen when it happened, so I let myself believe him.
“Then I saw those.”
The first picture—yellowed, the paper flaking—was of a girl in her teens, head tilted and smile wide. I flipped to the back. A rough hand had scribbled a name on it: Natalie.
The second photo, of a woman in her forties, was newer. The subject wore a blue dress and had been captured in profile. On the back of the photo was written another name: Anne.
While questioning me, Detective Rico had mentioned both those names: Natalie Robinson and Anne Jackson.
There was no name on the back of the third photo. Only a question mark, written in pencil. But I didn’t need a name. It was a photo of me.
I traced the question mark, wondering if the same pencil had etched the number two on the chocolate wrapper.
Though Natalie, Anne, and I weren’t related, we could have been. We were all redheads with light eyes, though it was hard to tell if Anne’s and Natalie’s were the same green as mine.
There was one more photo, which Brooklyn had placed in the stack facedown.
As I flipped it over, she said, “I’m sorry. But you had to know.”
I had assumed the last photo would be of Brooklyn. It wasn’t. Faded, obviously decades old, it was another of Natalie. No smile in this one. Her eyes were swollen slits, and though her lips were parted only slightly, I could see gaps where teeth should have been. She had been wedged in a box, then lowered in the ground, a mound of dirt at the edge of the frame. Obviously dead, and abused beforehand.
I dropped the stack on the table, hands shaking. I was so over being confronted with horrifying images.
“That’s a copy of the original, which I turned over to the police. There’s no picture of it, but Anne’s dead now too. So that just leaves me, who Carver tried to kill—and you.”
My fingers burned where I had touched the photo of the dead girl. “I don’t know him.”
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know you,” she said. “And in case you’re thinking I’m not his type . . .” She slipped the case off her phone and pulled out her driver’s license, which had been tucked inside. “This is how I looked when I met him.”
She handed me her license. The photo showed the same blue eyes, the same pale skin, but the hair was a shade lighter than mine. At one time, Brooklyn had been a redhead.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” she said.
I wasn’t convinced of my part in any of this. “That night on the trail, he didn’t seem to know me.”
“You’re sure?”
I considered this. “He seemed surprised.”
She let out a small laugh. “Let’s say a man comes home to find his wife and best friend having sex. He’s going to be mighty surprised, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know them.” She winced. “Sorry. Bad analogy. But that night, did he ever ask your name?”
He had asked who I was, but it had sounded less like an inquiry, more like an accusation: Who are you? Was that the same thing as asking for my name? “The situation on the trail didn’t exactly lend itself to introductions.”
“So what do you remember Carver saying that night?”
I remembered the threat about letting Brooklyn die, of course, and Carver asking whom I loved.
But what else?
Mouth suddenly dry, I poured myself a cup of cold tea. I drained the cup.
Carver had said my life was fucked up, but I didn’t know it yet. As if he had known it because he knew me. But maybe I was just letting Brooklyn get into my head.
When I didn’t answer, she said, “What I remember from that night is he could’ve killed you, easily, but he didn’t. He seemed shaken that you were there.”
I was skeptical. “You say Carver killed Natalie. He killed Anne. He tried to kill you. So, if that pattern holds, and he has a photo of me, why wouldn’t he kill me?”
“I only know what I believe.”
“Which is?”
She hugged a pillow to her chest with her good arm. “Before he killed Natalie and Anne, he loved them. I think that’s his pattern. He identifies a woman who interests him, stalks her, gets to know her from a distance, woos her. Loves her. Then he gets bored, or angry, and he fixates on someone new.”
I studied her eyes, wide and blue and framed with a fringe of dark lashes. Innocent, or the illusion of it anyway. I looked for tells that she was lying, but I could find none.
She continued, “I think he fixated on you while he was following me, because of my relationship with your husband.”
If I believed her, there was a question I needed answered. I braced myself and asked, “Was Sam planning to leave us?” Because it was us—me, Leo, and Audrey—that he had abandoned.
“If he was, it wasn’t for me.”
Since I had arrived, I had been uncertain whether to believe her, but this was the first statement I was sure was a lie.
“Early on, I had illusions it might be something,” she said. Too quickly. “But it was never that way for him.”
I pulled the envelope from my purse and unfolded it. “There’s a photo I’d like to share with you too.” I slid it across the table. “Is this you?”
Her face blanched, but she recovered quickly. “No.”
On this, I believed her. The young woman in the picture was thin like Brooklyn, but taller, with longer arms and a narrower torso.
“Is it Hannah?”
Brooklyn remained silent, her eyes cemented to the photo in front of her.