The echo of this place was dark. Unhappy.
She turned her mind back to the circumstances of the crime. She thought about Gavin getting home, finding the damage, and realizing that his wife was missing. He was about to call 911 to report it — but then the kidnappers interrupted him with their ransom demands. Their timing was oddly perfect, reaching out to him before he’d had a chance to bring in the police. That didn’t feel like a coincidence.
Somehow they knew when he’d arrived home.
Maybe they were watching from the street. Or—
She eyed the stairwell that led from the lower level of the house. When she traced the line of sight from the hallway to the far side of the living room, she spotted a bushy split-leaf philodendron potted near the front window. She went to examine it. Carefully separating the leaves, she located a wireless spy camera hidden inside the plant, with a vantage on anyone climbing the stairs.
They’d been waiting for Gavin to get home. Watching. Listening. By installing the camera, the kidnappers had been able to reach Gavin while he was not thinking clearly and still in a state of shock. We have your wife. And the camera would also let them know if he disobeyed their instructions and contacted the police.
This crime had been carefully planned and executed.
Standing in the living room, Serena found her attention drawn to the black-and-white pictures hung on the wall. She examined the photographs and recognized Gavin from the times she’d faced off against him in court. The curly blond hair. The intense, Jude Law eyes and enigmatic little smile. In most of the photographs, Gavin was with a woman, and she assumed this was Chelsey. They looked happy together. Big smiles, his arm around her shoulder, her arm around his waist. But Serena had learned not to trust what she saw in pictures. Photographs were two-dimensional, and you couldn’t see inside them, which made it easy for people to show a different face to the world.
She took a close look at Chelsey Webster. The largest of the pictures had obviously been taken at a wedding. Gavin was in a tux. His wife wore auburn-colored silk, glistening like liquid on her curves. She was as tall as he was, with a statuesque figure. She had full brown hair tumbling past her shoulders, as if the 1980s had never gone out of style. Her dark eyes were cool and intelligent, and her eyebrows arched sharply. Her blush was a little too pink, her lipstick a little too red, and her teeth a little too white. But the whole effect was of someone self-assured and attractive. She was certainly past forty, but the look she gave the camera celebrated her age, rather than hid from it. She looked tough, the kind of woman who had probably put up quite a fight when they came to take her.
“Serena?”
The voice came out of nowhere, like a whisper.
She whirled around, breathing hard, but she was alone and the room was empty. She felt sweat on her palms. What she’d heard was inside her head. She knew that voice; she could call it up just by closing her eyes and listening. Smoky, deep, always slurred by whatever she’d had to drink or whatever drug she was on.
Samantha.
She wondered why the photograph of Chelsey had triggered thoughts of her mother. The two women didn’t look at all alike. And then she remembered: the wedding. Serena had gone to her first wedding when she was thirteen years old. The older brother of one of her school friends had been getting married, and Samantha had taken her. It was so exciting, wearing a long turquoise dress, putting on makeup, doing up her long black hair, wobbling on high heels.
Her father had stayed home; he knew when he was the odd man out. Instead, mother and daughter had gone together, looking like sisters. Serena remembered how much she’d liked hearing Samantha tell people the story of her name, with sparkling laughter in her voice. “Serena? Well, do you remember that television show Bewitched? Here I am, natural blond, and that girl came out of me with that jet-black hair of hers, and I just knew she’d be my evil twin. I was Samantha, so naturally she was Serena.”
Her mother.
The prettiest woman in the world. Gorgeous, with that long sunflower hair and jewellike green eyes she’d given to Serena. Graceful where a teenaged Serena had still been clumsy. They’d danced together at the wedding, at least when Samantha wasn’t dancing with other men and giving Serena winks from the floor. They’d people-watched, with Samantha whispering mean little jokes about the other women in Serena’s ear, making her giggle. They’d smoked cigarettes outside the church like bad girls. They’d swiped a bottle of white wine after Samantha flirted with the bartender, and her mother had let her drink with her until past midnight as they lay in deck chairs by the Scottsdale pool. And when that bottle was gone, she’d brought them another, and Serena had gotten drunk for the very first time.
It had been the best night of her life. The best night ever. She’d gone home sick but high as a cloud, and she remembered how much she’d loved her mother for giving her that night, and how she would do anything in the world for Samantha. She wanted nothing else from the future but to grow up exactly like her.
And in the worst way, she had.
“Serena?”
This was a real voice.
She spun toward the noise from the shadows. Automatically, she lifted her gun and pointed it at a man standing at the top of the stairs. Without even a second thought, she curled her finger around the trigger. All she could see was a threat, and all her brain could think to do was fire.
Max Guppo thrust his hands in the air at the sight of the gun. “Serena! It’s me! It’s Max!”
Serena didn’t react immediately. It took time for Max’s words to break through the fog in which she found herself. She stared through the dark room, and her mind finally came back to reality. She wasn’t in Phoenix. She wasn’t with Samantha. This was Gavin Webster’s house in Duluth, and his wife was missing.
She lowered her gun and holstered it. Her skin flushed hot with shame and fear. “Christ, Max, I’m so sorry.”
“I called to you from downstairs. Didn’t you hear me?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything. I was distracted.”
Max waddled into the living room. He was short, mostly bald, and as overinflated as a child in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. He was also a sweet, cheerful father of five daughters who’d had an innocent crush on Serena ever since she arrived in Duluth from Las Vegas. They were the best of friends.
“Are you okay?” Max asked.
“Yeah. Sure. Don’t tell Maggie, okay?”
He cocked his round head with surprise. “I’d never do that.”
“Thank you, Max.”
“The forensics team is right behind me,” he said.
Serena felt her hands trembling, and she curled her fingers into fists to steady them. “Just have them dust everything, okay? But I don’t think we’ll find any prints. Whoever did this was smart. I’m going to go wake up the neighbors and see if they can tell us anything.”
Guppo nodded, but his face showed the same worry she’d felt from Jonny and Maggie. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” She looked around at the living room and saw the photos of Gavin and Chelsey staring back at her from the wall. “Right now, I just need to get out of this house.”
4
Despite the early hour, the lights were on in the house across the street. It was one of the homes that had gone through an expensive renovation, with a large two-story addition and floor-to-ceiling windows. Serena could see the silhouette of a man downstairs, his hands on his hips as he watched the police activity at Gavin’s house. Neighbors didn’t like that sort of thing.