Darby touched the cheek where Pike had scratched her, pulled away her finger and saw blood. ‘I need to go back to the diner.’

Williams checked his watch. ‘We should hit the road and get going to Brewster. We’ll need some time to go over the bodies.’

‘Hoder’s waiting for me in the diner.’

Williams drove her back to Cindy’s and dropped her out front.

Darby found Hoder sitting in the booth where she’d left him. The foot traffic had thinned out, and his plates had been cleared away. He had a glass of water in front of him, his expression that of a man who was suffering from a sudden bowel obstruction. Darby thought it might have to do with the man sitting across the table from him: Teddy Lancaster.

Darby returned the cordless to the front counter, thanked the waitress and approached the table. The breakfast she’d ordered was packed up in a Styrofoam container, a plastic set of utensils wrapped in a paper napkin resting on its top.

Hoder didn’t speak as he held out her iPhone. His expression was grave now, loaded with an I-told-you-so wisdom she didn’t want to face or acknowledge.

She had received a new text message. The incoming phone number was different, and there were no pictures this time, just words:

NICE TRY, BITCH

I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR YOU BEG

I change my mind about the grenades within five minutes of leaving my house. There are two reasons. First, a grenade is not a precise explosive. You pull the pin, throw it and hope for maximum collateral damage – and pray that you aren’t one of the casualties. But the second and more pressing reason makes me return home. The grenades I own – while military-issue and used effectively in combat situations in Third World desert countries like Iraq – were purchased through black market channels in Montana, and I don’t want to be driving across bumpy roads with them rattling underneath my car seat.

Besides, I have come up with a simpler and more effective plan: create a bomb that I can detonate remotely, using the prepaid disposable cell in my glove compartment. It would be easy to do, no more than half an hour’s work. A single stick of dynamite can not only create a bone-crushing blast radius and pressure wave, it can also turn any vehicle into a massive high-velocity fragmentation grenade. A single stick strategically placed inside the Silver Moon Inn won’t leave a sole survivor. Wait until night, when they’re all asleep.

Then my thoughts shift back to the mistake I made at the Downes house, and the ground suddenly seems unsteady beneath my feet. I feel like a nauseous drunk standing on the bow of a ship that’s cresting a wave. Sweating, I take out my cell phone.

I have only a single bar. I start to walk quickly, watching for the signal to jump. The second it does, I dial the number for the burner I gave Sarah, the one she carries with her at all times in case of an emergency, and duck into the alley between the old Army & Navy store and the building that once housed a Mexican restaurant.

Sarah answers immediately. ‘What’s wrong?’

I try to remove the fear from my voice. ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I say. ‘I’m calling because I need you to do me a favour.’

‘Okay.’ Sarah is understandably nervous. Wary. I can count on one hand the times I’ve called her burner.

‘I want you to hide,’ I say. ‘You know where to go.’

‘Are you in trouble?’

I am, Sarah. I’m in deep trouble. I made a mistake at the Downes house, a huge, critical mistake, and I tried to fix it – I thought I’d fixed it. For the first time in my life, Sarah, I’m truly frightened.

‘Baby?’

I’m thinking about the old furniture warehouse on the other side of town, where I’ve hidden a locked briefcase packed with $30,000 in cash and two fake Wyoming state licences with matching Social Security cards and passports. The passports won’t stand up to scrutiny in this post 9/11 world, but the licences and cash will allow us to set up somewhere else – provided we can get out of town cleanly. I need to think about how to do that, and there’s too much to think about, it’s all going to come crashing down, I know it –

‘Everything’s fine,’ I lie. ‘This is just a precaution.’

‘You want me to grab the suitcases?’

Yes, I want to say. Grab the suitcases and meet me at McClaren’s Furniture, and we’ll hit the road together. We’ll have to ditch your car for another one, and then it’s going to be just as I told you, we’ll have to be real careful the first year or so because our faces and everything I did here in Red Hill will be plastered all over the internet, it’s not like it was years ago when you could just pack up and hide, no, you’re a fugitive every second of the day for the rest of your life and –

‘No,’ I say. ‘There’s no need for the suitcases. Just go and hide for me – and keep the burner with you.’

‘Are you coming home?’

‘Soon.’

‘I love you.’

I hang up, thinking about the money, how much easier and simpler my life would be if I only had to worry about myself.

36

After Darby whispered in Hoder’s ear that his phone was bugged, she asked him leave it on the table. Then she moved to the other side of the small diner, to a short hall leading to the restrooms, and waited for him to join her.

He did so a moment later. Lancaster remained at the booth, sipping coffee and staring idly out the window at Ray Williams.

‘What does shithead want?’ Darby asked, nodding at Lancaster with her chin.

‘Trying to pry information out of me. What’s going on?’

Darby gave Hoder a quick summary of her conversation with Coop and of the burner Elisa Pike had found on the front windshield of her van. Hoder kept shifting on his feet, nervous, like the floor beneath had turned to a thin sheet of ice that had cracked and split and was now possibly moments away from breaking.

‘Right now our guy’s hidden and safe and planning his next move,’ Darby said. ‘Maybe’s he’s already got another family picked out.’

‘God forbid.’

‘I think we can use his hatred of women against him, even flush him out of his hiding place.’

‘How?’

‘By focusing his rage on a particular target.’

‘You.’

‘He’s already fixated on me, Terry. I say we keep it there.’

Hoder didn’t balk, and he hadn’t shown any surprise, and right then she knew he had already mulled over the idea of how he could use her as bait.

‘What do you have in mind?’ he asked.

Darby told him her plan. Hoder asked a few questions, and they went back and forth for a couple of minutes, hashing out minor details.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he said.

Darby agreed to meet him at the station later that evening. Then she left the diner with her box of food and climbed back inside Williams’s waiting cruiser, feeling exhausted and pissed off, her stomach grumbling with hunger. As an added bonus, she had a migraine-level headache.

Her iPhone and Williams’s flip cell were still in the trunk; it was safe to talk. In a voice that seemed other than her own, Darby gave him the same rundown that she had just given Hoder. She didn’t have to tell him about the software installed on the iPad in the Downes bedroom; Police Chief Robinson had already done that.

Williams got on the radio and sent out word about how the malware-infected pictures turned everyone’s cell phone into a walking microphone and GPS device, and that the only way to shut it down was to disconnect the battery from the phone. For those people who, like Darby, owned an iPhone, there was no way to disconnect the battery. They were told to isolate their phones someplace safe, preferably at home. Chief Robinson was going to follow up with a departmental email.

Then Darby summarized her conversations with Laurie Richards and Teddy Lancaster. She left out the part where Lancaster had also accused Williams of taking pictures inside the Connelly home – not because she didn’t want to broach the topic but because they had arrived at the Silver Moon Inn so that she could pick up her kit.