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Geoff.

He’s logged in, right now. At midnight on a Sunday. And he isn’t looking at the cameras, or the rotation, or the gate.

He’s looking at the access history.

He’s looking at the record of every search run on the system in the last hour. And every one of them has my name next to it. August twenty-eighth. May nineteenth. The gatehouse logs, both nights.

I pull up the gatehouse camera.

He’s sitting at the terminal in the little guard hut, his face lit gray-blue by the screen. A thickset man in his sixties, with a gray mustache and big, scarred hands.

Slowly, he lifts his head and looks straight up into the camera.

Straight at me.

GALANA

Geoff’s gone.

Garick’s men went to the gatehouse at half past midnight. By the time they got there, the terminal was off, the chair was empty, and the door was swinging open in the wind. His car was still in the staff lot. His phone was on the desk, smashed into pieces.

He left his coat on the hook. I keep thinking about that.

Caleb didn’t sleep. I didn’t either, really. I lay upstairs in the big bed in the house on the lake and listened to him on the phone in the study, low and steady, all night. Arina. Garick. Ivor. Leo. Then Arina again.

At six, he came up and lay down beside me on top of the covers, still dressed, and pulled me against his chest.

“He’s gone to ground,” he said into my hair. “Him, Riddings, Brenner. All of them.”

“Will they come back?”

He didn’t answer.

The message arrives while I’m in the kitchen. I’ve bought a kettle. Leo went to Target at eight with a list as long as my arm. He came back with a kettle and a colander, three mixing bowls and a grater. And to my surprise, a dog bed, which wasn’t on the list. He put it down by the back door and refused to discuss it.

I’m standing at the counter waiting for the new kettle to boil, and my phone buzzes on the marble.

An unknown number. A photograph.

It’s Papa’s car. The big black Mercedes Milana’s been driving this week. It’s parked at an angle in a little lot, with the driver’s door hanging open. Nobody in it.

Underneath, a message.

Milana is with us. Come to the boathouse at Belmont Harbor at 2 p.m. Alone. Tell your husband and she dies.

Everything inside me goes quiet.

The kettle starts to rumble. I don’t hear it. I’m staring at the photograph, at the open door, at the empty seat, and my heart’s slamming so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

My first instinct is to go.

That’s the terrible truth of it. Every part of me wants to grab my keys and run out the back door and drive. Not tell anyone. Just go, and get there, and fix it. Because that’s what I do. I see what people need, and I give it to them, and I don’t make a fuss.

I don’t go.

I pick up the phone and walk very fast down the hall to the study, and I push the door open without knocking.

Caleb’s at the desk with his laptop. He looks up, sees my face, and is on his feet before I’ve said a word.