Envy

“I know you do,” she said.

Colton read the directions off the MapQuest printout that Hayley had retrieved from her pocket, and Shania James did what she had to do. She had to protect the girls. Outside of the safety of her house, Shania recalled the promise she had made—a promise that lay dormant until it finally bubbled back up to the surface that night. Agoraphobic or not, Shania had no choice but to drive into the darkness of Port Gamble. Toward what? She wasn’t sure. No one in the car was.

THE WOODS OF KITSAP COUNTY WERE CREEPY enough in daylight. Add a wicked February wind and the black of night and it is the stuff of dark fairy tales, the kind of place where only a fool would wander. Shania pulled the Camry up the gravel driveway to Sava

A criminal.

An attacker.

Someone who would do evil.

A light in the kitchen turned on. Then another in the living room. As Hayley, Taylor, and Colton got out of the car, Sava

“Who’s there?”

“Hayley and Taylor Ryan,” Hayley called out. “We need to talk to you.”

Colton went to his mother’s door and opened it. “Mom, are you coming?”

“Just a minute,” Shania said, doing all that she could to steady herself. “Let me catch my breath.”

“Thank you for bringing us,” Hayley said, hugging her.

“Honey, don’t thank me,” she said. “At least, not yet. We don’t know exactly where this is going.”

The log cabin was warm, and stepping inside from the cold night air brought some relief. Shania had kept the air conditioner going full blast on the way from Port Gamble because she was sweating profusely and thought it would help her from passing out.

Sava

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked.

Neither did.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Osteen,” Taylor said, “but, no, we don’t.”

“You were babies; of course you don’t. Extraordinary babies.”

For a second it felt as if the gathering were some kind of reunion. The kind of occasion in which a teacher meets her class years later to survey the results of the seeds she’d planted. Yet that wasn’t quite right, of course.

“What is it that Moira Windsor thinks is so newsworthy?” Hayley asked.

Sava

The former linguistics researcher put her fingers to her lips. She didn’t like the way her words came out and apologized. “I’m on your side, and I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry that I showed Moira the tape.”

Hayley wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “The tape?”

Sava

“I’m Hayley,” she said, glancing at Taylor. “And this is Colton and Shania James.”

“Hello,” Sava

Sava

“It was supposed to be ongoing,” she said. “Some kids were going to be followed until first grade. You two probably should have been.”

“We were that good?” Hayley asked. “I mean that proficient.”

“You were good, very good, but not more so than many other kids in the study.”

“Then what’s the big deal with this tape? And why did you stop coming around? My dad said you dropped us.”

Sava

“Watch,” she said. As she had with Moira, Sava

They could hear their mother’s voice saying something off-camera.

“They can feed themselves,” she said.

Sava

“See what Taylor is doing?” she asked.

Shania leaned forward. “Yes, I see it,” she said. Up until that point, Colton’s mom hadn’t said much of anything.

“I don’t get it,” Colton said, looking at the frozen image of the two babies, the pasta on the tray. “What’s the big deal?”

Sava

Sava

They all did by then, but no one said anything. It was amazing, strange, and scary at the same time. It was something that could have been faked, of course, but no one in the log cabin even considered that.

It was real. Frighteningly real.

“Who’s Serena?” Shania asked, without a hint of shock in her voice that the twins had left a message on the tray table of the high chair.

“My sister,” Sava

Taylor and Hayley didn’t say a word. They just stared.

“Not to go where?” Colton asked, parroting the phrase seen in the videotape. “Where was she not supposed to go?”

Sava

“Don’t go where?” Colton repeated.

Still quiet, Hayley and Taylor had a sense where this conversation was going—not in specific terms, but in the outcome. They glanced over at Shania, and she smiled warmly, comfortingly at them.

She knew.

“She had a blind date,” Sava

Colton prodded her to continue. “And?”

Sava

“His name was Larry Milton,” she said, her words now clipped by emotion.

The name brought a chill into the room. It was almost like the fire was extinguished and the doors swung open, though that hadn’t happened at all. Not for real.

Larry Milton.

Everyone in the Pacific Northwest knew the name. Outside of deadly charmer Ted Bundy, Larry Milton was likely the most notorious serial killer in a state that for some reason had more than its share of such predators. He stalked and murdered several young women before being convicted of killing two college girls in Pullman.

Larry Milton was definitely in the Infamy Hall of Fame.

“Your sister was killed by him?” Hayley asked in disbelief.

Sava

“You know she was,” Sava

“That food message thing was random,” Colton said, almost wishing it to be true.