Brianna was tired, and her neck hurt like it had been twisted around Exorcist-style. The day had been an excruciatingly long one. She was ready for bed. There was no way she could sleep in that silly little car. That much she knew.

“I guess I kind of expected something better than Port Gamble, for sure. Who lives here?”

Drew got out and opened her car door. “No one. It’s as empty as a tomb. My buddies and I used to come here and get baked when we cut class.”

Brianna lingered in the seat.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

“None of this has been fun so far,” she said, stepping onto the mud and gravel path to the door. “I wish none of this ever happened. I want to feel sorry about Olivia, but she’s dead and there’s no way she’s going to benefit from my grief. I think I feel sorrier about me. In a week’s time the forces of the universe have conspired to ruin my life.”

Drew put his arms around her. “We’ll get it back on track. Once Mannie Garnett catches whoever killed Olivia, the heat will die down.”

“Don’t call the police chief that,” Brianna snapped, pulling away in an uncharacteristic moment of kindness. “She’s pretty nice. She’s just doing her job. How are we going to get inside?”

Drew held up a key. “With this.”

Brianna regarded the tarnished key, one that had been hanging on his key ring the whole time. She’d never noticed it before.

“Where’d that come from?” she asked.

“Come on,” he said, leading her to the door. “I told you this was my hangout with my boys.”

He twisted the lock and opened the old paneled door, sending the sound of its squeaking hinges through the night air.

“We won’t be here long,” he said. “I’ll get you out of here. Promise.”

Brianna was tired and she had no phone, no connection to the world. She doubted the house had a TV. She was totally and unnervingly unplugged.

“How long?”

“Only long enough.” He put his fingers to his lips. “We have to be quiet. Quiet as mice.”

SUNDAY MORNING, ALL OF THE LOCAL NEWSCASTS led with the story of Brianna Connors and Drew Marcello sightings—as everyone tried to find the pair of renegade, murderous teens that the media was now calling “Brianna and Clyde” after the famous outlaw duo from the 1930s. A woman at a gas station in Portland, a couple hundred miles south of Port Gamble, insisted she was absolutely sure she’d seen them the week before.

“Yeah,” she said, tapping her fingertip on a photo of the pair printed from the “Find Bree & Drew” Facebook page that had two hundred “fans” since its launch the previous day. “Those are the ones I saw here yesterday. That girl from TV, the one with the thongs, was buying cigarettes, and her boyfriend was hanging around waiting to use the bathroom. I wanted to say something to the girl about smoking being bad for you, but for some reason, I didn’t. Looking back now, I guess I didn’t want her to go off on me. She just looked so cold. So evil. No telling what she would have done. I think I’m lucky to be alive.”

Chapter 21

WHAT WAS IT THAT SHE WAS MISSING? Taylor returned to her parents’ bedroom closet and pulled out one of the Nike shoe boxes that held bits and pieces of her life, her sister’s, and, of course, their parents’. With her dad working on his book, her mom reading the Sunday edition of the Kitsap Sun, and her sister standing guard in the hallway, Taylor fanned the contents out on the bed.

She returned to the letter that had been sent from the University of Washington in Seattle. The name typed above the university’s printed return address was S. OSTEEN.

Savannah Osteen was the linguistics researcher who had videotaped the girls when they were infants. Savannah was conducting a study about the secret language twins purportedly share when something very unexpected occurred. The Ryan twins had spelled out a message in alphabet pasta on their highchair trays. It was a warning to Savannah that her sister, Serena, was in grave danger:

The camera had caught it all on tape—including the twins’ mom, Valerie, who clearly saw the message and then inexplicably wiped the trays clean.

The video that Savannah had recorded was what had gotten reporter Moira Windsor all riled up and ready to expose Hayley and Taylor’s “gift” the night that she died in the waters of Paradise Bay.

The night that Colton’s mom ran her into the bay and killed her.

Taylor looked over at Hayley, who was standing in the doorway, ping-ponging between watching her sister and the hallway.

“Let’s ask Dad if we can borrow the car,” she said.

“You want to go back to Savannah’s?”

“Yup.”

WHEN HAYLEY AND TAYLOR PULLED INTO the tree-shrouded driveway leading to Savannah Osteen’s cabin, it was apparent that something beyond terrible had occurred. The first indication was the driveway itself. It had been deeply rutted by several large vehicles. Hayley had to maneuver along the outer edge of the driveway, hoping that the winter-tough sword ferns and vine maples didn’t scratch the paint on their dad’s car.

As they drew closer, the twins almost stopped breathing. The log cabin that the former researcher from the University of Washington had lovingly restored and made her home had been obliterated. In its place was a pile of burned-out rubble and charred logs, a portion of which resembled the remains of a mammoth campfire. The only survivor, the only real proof that a house had once been there, was the river rock chimney and fireplace that stood abandoned, reaching toward the drizzly sky.

Yellow police tape wrapped around the charred remains of Savannah’s house. A red-and-white sign hung from a shriveled cedar tree:

DANGER! CRIME SCENE! DO NOT ENTER!

Contact Kitsap County Sheriff or Fire Marshal with any information.

Hayley looked at Taylor, but said nothing. There was nothing that could be said. Not really. What had happened was clear. An enormous fire had consumed everything in one big, hot, flaming gulp.

A woman in gray sweatpants and a navy-blue down vest was picking up bits and pieces of debris that had been blown from the house by the fury of the fire hoses. She had a large plastic bag slung over her sagging shoulder and a ski pole at the ready.

The twins, stunned by the sight, jumped out of the car.

“What’s going on here?” Taylor called over to the woman.

The scavenger paused mid-stab at the ground and leaned on her pole, looking over at the girls. “You related to the lady that lived here? I’m not taking anything of value. Just bits of metal that’ll rust out here in the elements anyway.”

“No, we’re not,” Hayley said.

“We know her, though,” Taylor added. “Where is she?”

The woman shifted her weight and aimed the grimy tip of her pole in the direction of the cabin.

“There,” she said. “They found her there.”

“Is she at the hospital?” Hayley asked, sensing that the question was going to bring only grief.

The woman, who seemed standoffish at first, now softened a little.

“She was practically a briquette, dear. Deader than a doornail. You said you knew her?”

A plane from the little airport next door buzzed overhead.

Taylor nodded. “Yeah, we did.”

The kind look she had disappeared. “You must not have known her well. She was a cooker.”

“A cooker?” asked Hayley, totally confused.

“Meth,” she said. “You girls aren’t here to get that crap, are you? Because if that’s what you’re up to, I just want to warn you that you’ll end up looking like trash. You know, with the yellow candy-corn teeth of a user.”

Taylor shook her head, a little insulted that the stranger suggested they were druggies. She and her sister were far smarter than that. So was Savannah Osteen. They knew from their first encounter with her last winter that she was a greenie. She raised pheasants just to release them in the wild. It was beyond belief that she was a drug dealer. While Savannah had had problems with substance abuse in the past, Taylor doubted it had changed the pure goodness that was still inside of her. The Savannah she knew would never hurt anyone.