The boat moved on the wind and tides, and sometimes the movement made her feel sick. The month of October had been cold; her hands were numb. She was so alone here. She twirled the ring on her finger. It began to feel like a friend, a companion, her ring.
She reached out, placed her hand flat on the porthole. Maybe someone outside would see and think she was waving. She tapped her ring, then turned it and dragged the stone across the glass. If she died, she would have left a little clue. A mark that would say she had been there. He would be so surprised. He would deserve it. She tried to press harder, but she felt very weak.
She wished he would come back and take her to the mansion. Even if there was a party, even if all the other men were there in their tuxedos—and the woman directing all the pretty girls in their gowns—even if they demanded she obey, even that would be okay. The cuffs would be off, and she’d have the chance to run away.
The woman had promised her that life would be a dream.
She began to cry, calling for the woman to come and take her back to her old life, to her old dreams, to anything but this.
She cried for anyone, even one of the tuxedoed men, to come and save her life.
5
Saturday, July 3; 3:00 a.m.–7:00 a.m.
Tom tried to get some sleep, but he and Jackie were too stirred up and worried about Kate. Their room was on the second floor, with a terrace that had a view of the Watch Hill lighthouse. They sat outside, watching the light flash every two seconds. There was very little wind, making it possible to hear the clang of the bell buoy marking the south end of the reef at Watch Hill Passage.
The steady pattern of the light’s beam, and the toll of the bell, calmed Tom. He and all Coast Guard personnel appreciated lighthouses, buoys, and other navigational aids that kept mariners safe; in spite of that, the USCG was evaluating which buoys to remove, considering that GPS had rendered some of them obsolete. There was huge opposition from boaters. And Tom thought it was a terrible idea.
He wished there were navigational aids for his family. They all looked after each other. That was the best they could do. But Tom was at a loss right now. He would do anything to help his brother and Kate, but he had no idea what to do. He thought of how he had always believed that Kate and Conor were going to keep each other safe throughout life, and he stared at the lighthouse beam and hoped that that was still true.
After a while, he and Jackie went inside. Jackie eventually drifted off, but by 5:30 a.m., Tom had given up. He climbed out of bed, leavingJackie deeply asleep; he got dressed and went downstairs. He grabbed a cup of coffee from the high-tech Italian machine in the lobby, stepped onto the verandah, and sat in one of the wicker chairs facing the ocean. With an hour to go until sunrise, there were still faint stars in the sky.
He texted Conor, then Kate, then Conor again.
Maybe they had found each other, he told himself. Maybe they had had a long talk, cleared the air, laughed at that nutjob Belinda, and had gone to bed up there in the Tower Suite. He hoped for that as much as anything he’d ever hoped for in his life.
Conor and Kate had been lost in different ways before they got together, and Tom thought about how they had met. When Kate had been only sixteen, she; her younger sister, Beth; and their mother had been tied up together and locked in the basement of the Woodward-Lathrop Gallery.
Conor had been a town cop back then—he’d joined the force straight out of college. He had discovered and rescued the sisters, but it was too late for their mother. She had died during the night, and it had been a horrific experience for Kate and Beth, unable to help her. The psychological damage was long lasting.
Years later, Conor had been assigned to another case involving Kate—an even worse one: Beth’s murder. He had solved it, but he couldn’t stop the sorrow that had rocked Kate for the months and years that followed. There were threads that connected to Kate’s family and friends, and they had triggered memories of that terrible night in the basement.
Could one family be cursed? Sometimes it seemed that Kate’s was. Tom had watched how Conor had loved her through the violence and its aftermath, through the trauma of two brutal crimes. Kate had gone through a period of depression—who wouldn’t, after those experiences, those losses?
She had thrown herself into her work at the gallery, steady in the art world but at times unpredictable in her relationship with Conor. She was half owner of the Cessna that she and her best friend, TallulahGranville, kept at Westerly State Airport, and she occasionally took off—literally—by herself. Conor saw that tendency as proof of her independence, and he was proud of her for it. But Tom and Jackie sometimes wondered where she went without him. And why she had to.
Was this situation—Conor and Kate driven apart at their rehearsal dinner—due to bad luck? Or bad choices?
Tom still didn’t have the whole story about Belinda, but something was off base with Conor, and that made him feel uneasy.
He watched the sun rise. It was 7:00 a.m. when he saw Conor and Joe walking up from the beach. Conor looked unsteady and unshaven. When Conor came up onto the verandah, Tom saw his red-rimmed eyes. He felt jolted to see his brother’s pain. Joe waved and went into the lobby to get coffee.
“She’s gone,” Conor said.
“Come on. Don’t think that, Con. She’s probably with Hadley or Sam,” Tom said. “Sam’s her maid of honor, right? Part of that role is holding the bride’s hand when she needs it.”
“I don’t think Kate wants to be a bride anymore,” Conor said. “I think she’s left me.”
“Does she have reason to?” Tom asked sharply, trying to read his brother. But there was no reaction, just a numb look in his eyes. Tom hated seeing him like that. “Go to your suite and clean yourself up. She’s coming back, I am sure of it. You want her to see you like this? Let’s go.”
They were headed across the verandah, into the hotel, when Tom heard a phone buzz with an incoming text. It was Conor’s.
“Is it Kate?” Tom asked.
“No,” Conor said, staring at the screen. “Unknown number.”
“What do they want?”
