Hayley looked at her sister and screamed without making a sound.

Run!

The man lunged at Hayley, and she did what Colton James had said was the worst possible thing a girl could do to a guy. She aimed her foot where it counted. She kicked him as hard and decisively as she could. Her aim was perfect. The man cried out and doubled over, and the girls took off.

RUNNING AS IF THEIR LIVES DEPENDED ON IT was the only thing Hayley and Taylor could do just then. Anything else would mean turning themselves over to the man pursuing them—and the deadly edge of his hunting knife.

And there was no way either girl was going to do that.

In two short minutes their world had shifted. The bright sunlight and safety of friendly neighborhood backyards and the town playground had disappeared, replaced by dark, ominous shadows. The glint of the blade as he pulled it out from behind his back was all they saw before they hit the asphalt.

Their legs pumped, faster and faster, past an empty swing set, over perfect Port Gamble lawns, straining against the temptation to stop. Hayley and Taylor knew they had only three options: run, hide, or escape. When they reached the last house and the forest tree line, they didn’t hesitate for a second before plunging ahead.

He was coming after them.

Hayley and Taylor thrashed wildly through the forest, their footfalls landing hard against the packed dirt in escalating rhythm with the blood that was jack-hammering through their bodies. They were on the run in a place where screams melted into the green folds of the woods. They knew they should stay together and tried not to look over their shoulders, hoping they wouldn’t get caught, wondering what horrors would happen to them if they did.

The lumbering sound of a large body crushing decaying leaves underfoot and brushing past mossy logs told the teens their pursuer was closing in. Then they heard the bristly sound of his thick voice.

“Stop! This is just a big misunderstanding. I only want to talk. I won’t hurt you.”

Lies. The word floated through Hayley’s mind as she imagined his real intention: Come here. Closer. So I can take this knife and slit your pretty slender throat like a chicken.

As she tunneled through a tangle of salmonberry bushes, small circles of red bloomed across the white field of her T-shirt.

Berry juice? Hayley wondered. In her heart of hearts, though, she knew it wasn’t. Salmonberries are bright orange, not red. Besides, it was autumn, and the berries were long gone.

In the terror of the moment, she paused mid-stride and realized that she and Taylor had become separated. She touched her fingertips to the damp fabric. It was blood. Hers? His? Her sister’s?

Hayley could hear the man’s heavy breathing, though she was sure he was not near enough to see her. She imagined the stink of his smoky breath and how he’d spout more lies. She was determined not to let him get any closer. Because if he did manage to find her, jump her, grab her, she knew that she would have to fight for the knife and do to him what he planned for her.

Just like a chicken.

As she passed through that thicket, not feeling the thorns or the branches lashing against her face, Hayley wondered one thing above everything else. Was her sister safe?

SPRAWLED FACE-DOWN ON THE GROUND, Taylor Ryan froze. She had no idea what was happening, but she tried to remain calm and still. Not move. Not breathe. She even tried to force her own heart to stop its drumlike beating. She’d tumbled over a fallen tree, gashing her right hand on the broken knob of a branch. Crimson muddled the knee of her jeans—Meks that she’d saved all autumn to buy. If this had been any other time, any other moment, she would have examined the jeans for tears. But not then.

Besides the maniac chasing her, only one other thing was on her mind as she crouched in the crook of that fallen hemlock. She wondered about Hayley.

Her twin.

Her other half.

Taylor could feel tears running down her face as she struggled to stay composed in that dank, dark forest. It was dead silent—the kind of silence that she hoped would conceal her location.

He appeared suddenly, from nowhere, begging, cajoling.

“Come out now. I won’t hurt either of you,” the man called again.

Either of you, Taylor thought with relief. Hayley must be alive.

Taylor rolled on her side and took cover in a ratty nest of sword ferns, trying to make sense of what had happened to them and why. First, there were the text messages. Then Hayley had mentioned something about Moira?

The twins had followed their dad’s rules, if only partially. They had gone together. They didn’t get into anyone’s car. They agreed to meet in a public place. They did all of that. They were not stupid. They were raised on Bundy, Manson, and that dopey-looking Craigslist Killer. They understood that evil didn’t always look the part.

And yet there she was, hiding from sure death, literally scared stiff. Wondering if she deserved this. If she’d been good enough to the world. If what happened to Moira was their fault. If karma had knocked on their door with a poisoned Edible Arrangement.

Trying to steady herself, Taylor started to stand. A fan of dark-green ferns parted, and a patch of apricot, a color so wrong for the dank cedar- and fir-laden forests of Washington State, caught her eye.

Apricot?

She leaned closer, feeling the earth shift under her feet as icy fear swallowed her into the heavy black soil.

Apricot.

It took every ounce of self-control she had to keep from screaming. It was a bra. Lacy and torn. A garment in a place meant to conceal it forever.

Taylor touched it with a fingertip, and she knew—she felt— immediately what she had stumbled on.

Brianna Connors. The bra belonged to her.

Twigs snapped, and the sound of boots sloshing through a creek a few yards away ricocheted over the forest floor. Hayley?

Then, the voice again.

“I just want to talk to you,” he said.

Like hell, killer.

What Taylor didn’t allow herself to think was what she already knew. A truth that was deep in the marrow of her bones. He had answers. Answers to questions about their past that nobody else had ever dared give them. He held a piece of the puzzle that had only started to take shape, she now realized.

There was only one way to find out what they wanted to know. But how was she going to make sure she wouldn’t be on the losing end of the man’s knife?

Exhaling slowly, Taylor paused, then took a deep breath and stepped away from Brianna Connors’s lingerie, out into the clearing.

Chapter 24

FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, Annie Garnett scoured the Olivia Grant file, backtracking to the murder scene as captured by the crime-scene photographers and the cell-phone cameras of the partygoers.

She picked through the dozens of photos and pulled the wide-angle view of the scene from where she had taped it to her whiteboard. Everything was as it had been imprinted on her mind: dead girl on the floor, blood pooled underneath the body and into the cracks between the floorboards, a pile of clothes next to the bed, mirror, dresser, and another pile of clothes across the room on a chair. She had looked at the photo so many times Annie knew she could probably draw it by memory.

Sliding it slightly to the right, the tired police chief retrieved the forensics report and placed it next to the picture. Could she have missed something? The evidence was staring her in the face, but what was it telling her?

Annie looked from the report to the photo and back again. Reading down the list of items, she noticed something that she had disregarded before. The discovery made the hair on her thick, muscled arms rise up. The crime lab had found a single black fiber on Olivia’s shoulder, sequins in her hair, and white threads—none of which matched what she was wearing when she died.