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Sandrine’s body quivered. “But Brian and Nicola know that we know Meg was murdered and that we suspect Taryn was as well—I mean, would they let us all go knowing that a police investigation will immediately begin? Every single one of us would be a suspect, right? Including them.”
“Yes.”
A tear slid from the corner of Sandrine’s eye and over the bridge of her nose, onto the pillow. “How do we do this? How do we stay alive?”
“I think your plan of all of us staying together is safest.”
“I don’t want to be in the same room with them,” Sandrine said. “Either of them.”
“We have no choice,” Josie said.
Sandrine buried her face in her pillow, sobbing. Her words were muffled but Josie made them out. “Oh God. I can’t believe this. It’s such a nightmare.”
Josie touched her arm. “I know. Sandrine, we will get out of this, and I’ll do everything I can to keep you and Alice safe.”
A small voice at the back of her mind asked,Like you kept Taryn safe?
Josie did her best to ignore it. Another scan of the room told her that no one could hear them. She tapped Sandrine’s shoulder again until she came up for air. “Sandrine, Nicola and Brian—whoever they are—have repeatedly insisted that you are a fraud and that you’re not who you say you are. That makes me think they believe there is something about you that they can expose. I don’t know why they think that or why it is so important to them, but they went to great lengths to get close to you.”
Sandrine shook her head, hair swishing over her pillow. Then she went very still as a thought occurred to her. “Do you think they’ll…come after me? Do they want to kill me?”
Josie rubbed her eyes. “If they wanted to kill you, they could have accomplished that with a lot less effort than following you to a retreat and spending the week participating in all of this.”
“But what do they want? This is absolute madness. What could be so important to them that they were willing to kill Meg—and possibly Taryn?”
“I don’t know,” Josie answered. “But I want you to be honest with me. Our lives may depend on it.”
“I have been honest with you,” said Sandrine, her fingers gripping the edge of her blanket.
In her gentlest tone, Josie said, “We both know that you haven’t.”
Sandrine blinked. “What do you mean?”
“You can start by telling me your real name.”
THIRTY-NINE
Sandrine propped herself up on one elbow, now looking down at Josie. In the faint firelight, Josie could see the shock on her face. Her skin was so pale that it was almost translucent. A vein in her forehead pulsed. “What are you talking about?”
“Shh,” Josie cautioned, gesturing for her to lie back down so as not to draw the attention of Nicola or Alice. “I know that Sandrine Morrow is not your real name.”
Sandrine laid her head back onto her pillow, one hand tucked under her cheek. “But how? How could you know that?”
This was the idea that had taken hold during the hours that she and Brian were sitting watch over the rest of the group. She’d been thinking about what Brian, Nicola, and Taryn could want so badly to find out from Sandrine. Whatever it was, they hadn’t just wanted to hear it from her—they’d wanted it on video. Brian had outright told Josie that he and Nicola didn’t think Sandrine was the person she claimed to be. They were accusing her of the same thing that they’d done to get onto the retreat. It made Josie wonder if Sandrine really was hiding something. Then she remembered the conversation she’d had with Sandrine in the rage room.
She had told Josie:It took a long time and a lot of work to become who I am right now, standing before you. But I am just me. I’m Dr. Sandrine Morrow.
She’d said she was Dr. Sandrine Morrow as if it were an identity she had assumed rather than her actual name.
“I didn’t know it,” Josie said. “I figured it out from things I heard in the last couple of days. You said your mother was an actress. Maybe she wasn’t that famous but surely, with the success you’ve achieved in your career, you would have been linked to her at some point. I didn’t do a major internet deep-dive on you before I came to this retreat, but I did some research. There’s nothing about your mother—or any family—at all.”
Sandrine took in a shuddering breath. “Fine. You’re right. My real name is not Sandrine Morrow but, Josie, I can assure you that all of my credentials and my experience are very much real. Everything else about me is real. These people cannot possibly have come all this way and gone to all this trouble because I changed my name when I was twenty-one years old!”
Sandrine was right.
A creak from the other side of the room silenced them. Josie rolled over momentarily to see Alice loading more scraps of wood into the stove. She would love to discuss all of this with Alice. She was as close to a colleague as Josie had on this mountain. There just hadn’t been an opportunity to get her alone in the last several hours. Then again, Alice was walking the emotional edge. She’d already revealed Meg’s murder to the group after Josie had specifically asked her not to. Josie didn’t fault her for doing so—after all, each one of them was on the mountain because they were dealing with the devastating effects of complex PTSD. Given the blizzard and Meg’s death, they were all under a tremendous amount of stress. Add to that their physical fatigue and Taryn’s strange disappearance, and it was enough to push any one of them to their breaking point. Maybe it was best to keep all the new information between her and Sandrine for now.
Once Alice was seated again, wrapped in her blanket, Josie and Sandrine turned toward one another once more.
