He was alone. The mile-long walk to Serena's house was cold and hard. The houses were indistinguishable without the brightness of the moon and largely hidden by the skeletons of trees. He knew where to veer west off the beach when he came upon the twin pieces of driftwood he had left as a marker earlier in the day. He followed the trodden-down path up through the wild rye and picked his way to the edge of the trees, where he was only a few yards from the rear door of the cottage. He waited there, invisible. The house was dark. The concrete driveway to the street was empty.
He allowed himself a maximum of five minutes inside and set a vibrating timer in his rear pocket. He glanced at the fences on either side of the narrow lot and marched down to the rear screen door, which was open. He left his boots on the porch, where his footprints were lost in the matted snow. In his wool winter socks, he crept through the porch to the back door, shone a penlight on the lock, and let himself inside in a few seconds.
Her smell was everywhere. It was the first time he had been close enough to inhale her aroma again. He allowed himself a moment to savor it. To him, that smell was all about dry heat, sweat, and soft flesh. He felt young. He felt reborn and powerful.
His first stop was in the living room. He didn't even need thirty seconds to choose a location, secrete the bug, and test the signal strength. The next stop was their bedroom. He had hoped to plant a Web cam, but he surveyed the white walls and knew there was nowhere that the equipment wouldn't be seen. He settled for a second bug and affixed it behind the beams of their headboard.
He was outside again before the timer went off. He scouted the rear of the house and attached a signal booster behind one of the aluminum downspouts, which would give him at least two miles of transmission. From inside the van in the park a mile away, he could listen.
Back in the woods, he waited for her. The cold made him stamp his feet. It was never this cold in the South. He didn't know how people lived here. It almost made him yearn for the soul-draining humidity of Alabama. His toes grew numb as time wore on, and finally, he saw headlights sweep across the driveway as Serena pulled in and parked. His muscles tensed. He watched her climb out and go inside the house, unaware of his presence. He slipped a receiver inside his ear and heard her footsteps and the rustle of her clothes as she removed her coat. When she got close to the bug, he heard her breathing.
He half-wondered whether, at some level, she smelled him in the house, too, as he had smelled her inside, like a rumor at the back of her mind. A flashback, a memory.
He slipped out from behind the trees and made his way to her car, keeping an eye on the cottage windows. Where they were lit, she couldn't see out, but he froze when he saw her pass in front of the glass and gaze toward him. Their eyes met, as they had so many times when he was watching her. She passed into another room.
He bent down under her car and positioned the GPS transmitter, then got up and retreated to the beach without looking back. The receiver was still in his ear. He listened to her as he retraced his route toward the van. In the bedroom, he heard her humming as she undressed. He heard the jangle of the loops on her gold belt. Nearby, the water of the shower ran. He pictured her naked body, saw her skin under his hands.
His cell phone buzzed on his thigh. He was annoyed by the distraction and did a quick survey of the beach to confirm he was alone. He pulled out the phone and recognized the number. Reluctantly, he shut down the receiver in his ear.
"What?" he hissed.
"They found Tanjy's body."
"So?"
"So you told me it would take months. Maybe years."
He trudged step-by-step along the gray sheet of ice. The lake rumbled next to him. It was fucking cold.
"It's bad luck they found her, but it doesn't change anything. Don't worry, you're safe."
"You told me you'd leave the city after this was done."
"I will."
"So why are you still here?"
"I have unfinished business," he snapped.
"What business?"
"My business. This one's personal."
The silence across the night air was lethal. "Do you have any idea what's at stake for me?"
"That's your problem," he said.
"What other schemes are you running? Tell me."
He breathed into the phone and saw steam evaporate like a ghost in front of his face. "You don't want to know."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"I mean, Tanjy wasn't the only one. I decided to do some others, too."
He waited. It was funny how even the most arrogant, cold-blooded ego could get punctured like a fat balloon by fear.
"You're a monster."
"Yeah? What does that make you? Remember, it was your idea."
"Who were the others?"
"It doesn't matter. Alpha girls don't give up their secrets." He laughed.
"I want you gone. Is that clear? You've been well paid."
"I'll decide when I'm done, not you."
He snapped the phone shut and turned it off.
With his other hand, he switched on the receiver again and nestled it in his ear. He was back at the van. He slid inside, cranked the heat, and listened. His feet slowly thawed. He peeled off layers of clothes.
Inside Serena's house, the noise of the pipes ended. He heard her return to the bedroom and imagined her nude flesh, pink and scrubbed. Her long, wet hair. Her nipples hard and her mound glistening with moisture. With each of the others, he had imagined he was with Serena. Controlling her. Violating her. Paying her back for those ten years she had stolen from him.
It was her turn.
Soon.
23
Stride was worried. It was almost midnight, and Maggie was late.
He was parked in the lower lot of the high school, with a vantage on the lights of downtown and the black emptiness of the lake. He had gone through two cigarettes waiting for her. Snow fell in heavy sheets, blowing over the top of the hill and swirling around him like a tornado. It was hard to look straight on into the snow. His eyes squinted, and his face scrunched up, his windburnt cheeks turning pink. Ice clumped in balls on his eyebrows. The flakes streaking toward him were nothing by themselves, but together they were a relentless army. When the wind drove them home, they were like a million knives. They could blind him, freeze him, and bury him in the same storm.
Gauzy headlights appeared on the road above him and swung down into the lot. He recognized Maggie's Chevy Avalanche. Maggie drove fast, and the truck weaved on the slick, steep driveway. It was a huge truck for a tiny woman, so big that she needed wooden blocks to reach the pedals. She was a terrible driver. Stride thought she drove recklessly just to spite him, because she was worse whenever he was in the truck with her.
She parked at an angle near his Bronco and got out. She wore a leather coat that draped to her ankles and high, square-heeled boots. Her hands were shoved in her pockets. She kicked up wet snow as she came closer.
He hadn't seen her since he was at her house the night of the murder, and he realized how much he had missed her. He came closer, ready to hug her, but she pulled a hand out of her pocket and held it up to stop him.
"No," she told him. "No pity. Especially not from you."
The few feet between them may as well have been a canyon. "Come on, Mags. This is me. You don't have to prove how tough you are."
"I sure as hell do." She looked him up and down. "You ever heard of waiting inside your truck? You look like a goddamn snowman."
"I don't mind the cold."
"You mean, you don't want Serena smelling cigarette smoke inside the truck."
"Right."
"Well, I'm not standing outside. Let's get in the Avalanche."
They walked to opposite sides of her truck. Stride shook off as much snow as he could before climbing inside. The cab was warm, and he took off his gloves. Maggie didn't look at him. She sat behind the driver's seat staring at the panoramic view. He realized how strange it felt to see that she was older. There were tiny crow's-feet beside her eyes and a few strands of gray in her jet-black hair. She would always be a twenty-something kid to him, intense and smart. That was part of the problem-for him, she never grew up. It still felt like yesterday that Maggie was a young cop complaining about the Enger Park Girl murder, chewing on the rim of a Styrofoam coffee cup and insisting they had missed something, when Stride knew they hadn't missed anything at all. But that was a long, long time ago. It was as if he had put Maggie in a box in his mind, so that bad things never happened to her, but all the while she got older and bad things happened anyway.