Good.

She felt the teenager’s rib cage rise and fall with her breath.

Alive.

Paige’s eyes fluttered, and she moaned. Her face was scratched, her body red and sore from the ordeal, the terror of which, Kendall knew, would never, ever leave her.

On either side of her forehead two X’s had been inked with a Sharpie.

They watched the conflagration blow out the mobile’s windows as it sent a toxic black tower roaring into the treetops. Kendall retrieved a blanket from a porch swing and wrapped it around Serenity’s shoulders. The reporter still had not said a word.

Her sister was another matter.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea Sam would do this. I had no idea about any of this! I thought it was some kind of game.”

Kendall looked up from where she knelt beside Paige.

“A game? What kind of game leaves four women dead?”

Melody was making crying sounds, but no tears dripped. “Look, you have to believe me. I had no idea what Sam was doing.”

Serenity, clearly in shock, had barely said a word as she stood shivering. Her eyes, now alert, darted in the direction of her sister. Melody loosened her grip on something she was holding, and it fell on the gravel driveway.

Skye’s yin and yang necklace.

“How could you,” Serenity finally said.

Melody took a step back, away from the other women. “How could I what? You have no idea what I’ve done.”

“I hate you, Melody.”

Melody looked over at the burning mobile.

“Get in line,” she said.

Kendall drew her gun once more. “Don’t even think about running. Get down. On the dirt. Now.”

The wheels turned as Melody weighed the detective’s order.

“Down, now!”

She dropped to her knees, her expression grim. But cool, given the circumstances, oddly so.

Serenity reached for the necklace, the glimmer of the hammered silver turned black by the flames, and it swung like a pendulum.

Paige opened her eyes and let out a scream that mixed with the sound of sirens through the smoke. And although there were a hundred questions swirling through Kendall Stark’s mind, two thoughts pushed their way to the forefront.

Where is Josh? Did he stop Sam Castile?

Josh had never lost sight of Sam, now clad in a T-shirt and faded blue jeans and scrambling over the forest deadfall toward the road, a couple hundred yards away. Josh had drawn his weapon, and when he yelled at the man to freeze, Sam Castile did something remarkable.

Sam stopped and put his hands up in the air.

“So you got me,” he said. “Big deal.”

“Big deal for you,” Josh said, a little out of breath, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “Drop to your knees.”

“That sounds like something I’d say,” Sam said, a smile breaking over his sweaty face.

As he ran his hands over Sam’s frame to ensure that he carried no weaponry, Josh recited the Miranda rights.

“Wonder if your little girlfriend made it out okay.” Although the words were uttered with sarcasm, Sam’s gape held no emotion. His eyes were as lifeless as buttons, unblinking, unfeeling. “She’s a hot little thing.”

Josh cuffed him with plastic restraints that he’d pulled from his coat pocket. “I wonder if you’re going to be on the receiving end of the needle at Walla Walla.”

“You and I are not so different, you know,” Sam said.

Josh tried to let the remark pass as if he hadn’t even heard it, but it was hard to do. Just the idea that he was anything like the piece of scum he’d just picked up made him even angrier. He didn’t ask all the questions he wanted to. He worried that Kendall might not have made it into the mobile in time to save Serenity.

“We both like using a young thing now and then, right?” Sam said with a wink.

Josh thought about it for only a second before he punched Sam in the gut, sending him to the ground.

“I’ll have your badge for that,” Sam said, choking for air.

The detective relaxed his fist. “Oh, I don’t think so, pal. It’ll be your word against mine, and I have a pretty good idea who they’ll believe.”

Melody stood mute, barely looking at anyone as the responders arrived-more visitors in that hour than in the decade she’d lived there. Smoke and steam spun high above the trees as local firefighters emptied their sole water tank. Paramedics hovered over Paige and Serenity, who were placed in the back of the ambulance. Paige was given oxygen, but Serenity refused it. She was bloodied and bruised, but her expression was resolute.

“I can drive myself home,” she said.

Kendall patted her hand. “No, you can’t. Not after what you’ve been though.”

“I want to talk to my sister.”

“She’s in custody, Serenity.”

“I want to know what has been going on here.”

“There’s time for that. But not now,” Kendall said.

The ambulance doors shut, and the red and white vehicle began to pull away as Josh returned to the driveway. Sam and Melody Castile were on their way to booking. Josh looked the worse for the wear, his slacks torn by blackberry vines, his face bleeding from minor scratches from vegetation incurred during the pursuit.

“She’s going to be okay,” Kendall said, following his eyes to Serenity.

“She’s tough, isn’t she?” he said, trying to reel in his emotions.

“She is.”

The pair stood for a minute before heading back to their vehicles and the mountain of paperwork that faced them at the office.

“They did this together,” Kendall said. “Sam and Melody.”

“She’ll say she was abused.”

“They always do. And maybe she was. But honestly, her own sister?”

Josh thought of the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka case in Canada. He didn’t bring it up because he knew the outcome and it chilled him. Karla and Bernardo had raped and murdered Karla’s sister, Tammy. Karla testified against Bernardo and eventually found her way to freedom. The idea of a man and woman joining forces to commit debased acts was hardly unheard-of: Fred and Rosemary West had raped and murdered as many as a dozen girls-including their own daughter-in Great Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s.

But this was close to home.

“I feel sorry for the little boy,” Josh said.

“I’m not without hope there. He sent us here with his drawing,” Kendall pointed out. “He knew what he was doing.”

“I wonder what will happen to him?”

“He’s got family,” she said.

Chapter Sixty-two

April 7, 9 a.m.

Port Orchard

They were on opposite sides of the glass partition separating good from evil, the yin and yang of the justice system. Others were facing each other through the transparent wall as well. Some were husbands talking to wives whom they still stood by; some were fathers trying to understand the error of their ways as they spoke with delinquent daughters. The glass was an inch thick, a good insulator of sound. So despite the fact that one could look into the other’s eyes and talk, they had to use a telephone. Intimacy was reduced, but safety ensured. That pretty much summed up the way visitors’ row at the Kitsap County Jail had been designed. Only once had the glass been damaged: when an angry inmate used the receiver instead of words to make a point, leaving a spiderweb of fissures.

Serenity studied her sister as she reached for the phone.

“You doing all right?”

Melody’s eyes were cold. Colder than usual. “What kind of a question is that? I’m not doing all right at all.”

“Melody, I can see that. Tell me what is going on.”

“Is this for the paper?”

“This is for me.”

“I’m not speaking to anyone without a lawyer. I’m not stupid, Serenity. I mean, I’m not going to be stupid anymore.”

“Melody, please.”

Although Melody looked directly at Serenity, there appeared to be nothing warm and alive behind her eyes. Not even a glimmer of the sister she thought she knew.