Crickets are what Tim gets in response. I angle my head as I look at him, trying to work out what he’s going to say next.
“The second half of the video is what matters. It was slowed down by something like eight hundred percent. It doesn’t sound like crickets anymore, but music. Like a choir of human voices. I thought that was so amazing,” Tim says. “How making one change can produce a totally different outcome.” He pauses. “We don’t all come from the same place, you know? We’ve all got different backgrounds and different pasts, and that affects how we see things. Like with those crickets. Everyone on Tern Island told us what they wanted us to hear. But you heard something different.”
“That doesn’t guarantee it was right.”
“I was willing to take that chance. We’re a team.” He paused to swallow. “I figured you knew what you were doing.”
“You’ve got a lot of faith in me, under the circumstances.”
“Of course I do,” he says, not taking his eyes off mine. We both fall silent. Then, “How’s it going with Carson?”
My fiancé and I are through, of course. Tim knows that, and he cares about how I’m taking it. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, upending my former life and starting over. But easy isn’t something I expect from upstate New York anymore.
I study Tim’s gray eyes, the strong angle of his jaw. His face is the face of a good man. I can’t believe I ever doubted him. “If it wasn’t for you, if you hadn’t told me how Carson treated you back then . . .” My voice trails off. “Just . . . thanks. You were right. I talked to McIntyre. After Carson called her, she took it upon herself to do some research on him. All this time I thought he left New York for me, to help me heal, but that wasn’t it. Carson was fired. The NYPD psych division was getting complaints about him from the people he counseled. All of them women.”
“Wow.” Tim’s gaze falls to the floor.
“Listen,” I say. “This is all wrong.”
I hear his breath catch. “Oh?”
I smile. “Yeah. I’m the one who should be buying today.”
The closest bar is a Mexican place three minutes away. I turn up my collar against the bracing cold as we climb into the car under an overcast sky. The drive is made in silence, and we don’t talk again until we’re seated at a table with menus in hand. There’s no need to consult with Tim before ordering two margaritas and a platter of pork tacos to share. When I turn over the past three months in my mind, all the time we’ve already spent together, I realize I know him better than I thought.
The drink numbs my throat like a balm as Tim throws himself into small talk with impressive zeal. I appreciate the effort; after all the talking I’ve just done, I could use a break from the sound of my own damn voice.
“So,” he says after a while, when we’ve both paused to sip at our drinks. Tim seems suddenly nervous; under the lip of the table he jiggles his knee. “I thought about what you told me.”
“What I told you?”
“About Bram.”
“Oh.” I set down my drink too hard. The glass strikes the tabletop with a clink.
“Everything you said that day about the kidnapping, and letting him go. He’s still out there,” Tim says. “How do you know he’s not coming back for you? What I’m saying is, I’m worried. Moving up here . . . I’m not sure it’s enough.”
God, what I’d give to be able to tell you everything.
“You said the police figured out who he was,” Tim goes on. “A custodian in the building. So why haven’t they found him?”
“He changed his name? It’s not that hard. He’s done it before.”
“What about his ties to Swanton? Someone must have followed that lead. If he was so obsessed with the place that he risked giving himself away by telling those women where he was really from, maybe he went back there. Has anyone combed the town to see if they could figure out who Bram really is?”
I shrug. Say nothing.
Tim casts a glance around the bar. If he’s picturing me sitting in a place just like it, talking to a killer, he doesn’t let on. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually,” he says. “Everything you’ve been through. Tell me something. How much did Carson explain to you about Stockholm syndrome?” Folding his hands, he leans closer. The act reminds me of the day I met Carson, when he was still just a harmless shrink. “What I’m asking,” says Tim, “is how much did you know about that condition before you went to see him?”
“Doesn’t everyone know about Stockholm syndrome?”
“The concept? Sure. But the symptoms, the circumstances surrounding it, the particulars about onset and—”
“You’d make a great therapist,” I say.
“I’m serious. How much did you know about that stuff?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Carson diagnosed you.”
“So?”
“So do you agree with him, or was that just a convenient excuse to justify letting Bram go?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re forgetting,” he says grimly. “Carson manipulated me, too. I know how persuasive he can be. He convinced everyone at the NYPD you weren’t in control down there. I’m sure he was believable. I’m sure it made sense. But here’s the thing, Shana. You’re stronger than that. I think you suspected he was wrong, and went along with that diagnosis anyway.”
“And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because you’re you. You need to know what makes people tick. You like to get inside their heads. Look what happened on the island, the way you solved that case. The how isn’t good enough—you have to know why. If you killed Bram that day, down in that basement, you’d have lost your chance to find out.”
“Find out what?”
“Why he took those other women’s lives and not yours.”
Under his cartoon eyebrows, Tim’s eyes are serious as death. I’ll never look at his eyebrows and see a clown again.
“You’re wrong,” I say, because I don’t know how else to play it. How can I explain without telling him the truth?
“You were afraid it would happen all over again on the island,” Tim says. “That you’d let the killer escape and put other people at risk.”
“Every investigator’s afraid of that.”
“Maybe so. But promise me you won’t beat yourself up over it, Shane. You’re not the one at fault.”