CHAPTER 77

GRANT

The minute the front door latched into place behind Perla, I sprinted down the hall and into Sophie's room.

The lights were off, the girls in bed, a night-light bathing the room in a gentle peach glow. I ran to the bed and leaned over to examine the girls, then shook Sophie. She was slow to wake up, unnaturally slow, and I shook her harder. "Sophie," I said loudly. When she finally opened her eyes, they were heavy, her pupils unfocused. Shit. Nine Ambien. Four of us.

"Wake up," I said urgently. "There's someone in the house. Someone bad. I need you to help me wake up the girls and get them onto the balcony, then crawl down—the way we did when we practiced the fire drill, remember?"

"What?" she said, pushing herself up, then flopping back down. "Dad, I'm tired."

I shook her harder, so hard that her head snapped back and she winced in pain. " Sophie, wake up. This is very, very important. Listen to me carefully." I repeated the instructions, shaking her every time her eyes began to close. "Do you understand?" I asked her.

"Yeah." She yawned. "And then what do we do?"

"Wait for me behind the tree of the tree house. Just lay there on the ground and be quiet. Wait until I come and get you, okay?"

She nodded and yawned again. "Okay. Go on the balcony, crawl down. Lay behind the tree house."

"You need to be very, very quiet when you do it, do you understand? As silent as possible."

"Okay." She leaned over and poked Mandolin in the side. The girl didn't move.

I circled to the other side of the bed and roughly shook Bridget, then Mandolin. "Wake up, girls," I said loudly. "Come on. Now. Get up and hurry."

They both complained, and Bridget rolled onto her stomach and tried to pull the comforter over her head.

"Here, you can each take a pillow. Lay down there and go back to sleep."

I opened the balcony door, frantically gesturing them through, and watched, my heart in my throat, as they trudged to the far end of the balcony. Sophie's room faced the back of the house, but I didn't know what Perla was doing or how quickly she'd be back. As long as Sophie followed my directions, they should be out of sight, but my heartbeat was still running at full sprint through my chest.

Sophie swung her pajama-panted leg over the railing and onto the flat roof. It wasn't ideal, the girls walking along the roof and over to the oak tree, which they would need to climb down to the ground, but it was doable. We had made a game of it when we'd practiced the fire drills, and Sophie had done it in less than a minute.

Our eyes met and she looked more alert. "Be careful," I said quietly.

"I got this, Dad. We're good."

"I love you," I whispered, aware that it might be the last time I had the chance to tell her.

"Love you too." She gestured for me to go, and I hurried back inside. Her bed was glaringly empty, so I snatched at the pillows, stuffing them into body-size shapes under the covers.

Perla would be coming back. Whatever she was doing in the front yard—Disabling the gate? Hiding the keys to our cars?—she would be back, and then ... what?

I already knew the answer to that. I'd seen the knife in the bag. The props she planned to use. She hadn't changed. She had just grown older and smarter.

There was a sound downstairs, and I froze, then carefully sprint-walked to the bedroom door and put my ear to the open crack, listening. The front door clicked shut.

She was back.

It was interesting that my wife, even as she navigated this descent into hell, took the time to remove her shoes. I heard the entry bench creak as she sat down on it. I knew exactly what she was doing. Removing the right, then the left. Pulling the laces tight and tucking them into the shoes before she opened the door to the coat closet and placed them on the appropriate shelf.

That gave me a minute, at most. I moved frantically around the room, making sure that the balcony door was closed, its curtains drawn, the bed realistically full. I considered bolting out of the room, but I needed to see whatever it was that Perla was about to do. My gaze ping-ponged around the room, looking for a hiding spot, and I hurried over to Sophie's closet, where I eased in, pulling the door until it was ajar just a crack.

Placing my eye to the opening, I softened my breathing and waited. My heart felt like it was galloping inside my chest, and I placed my hand on it, willing it to slow down.

The bedroom door eased open, and I watched as my wife stepped into our daughter's bedroom. She nudged the door shut with her heel and was pulling on tight latex gloves as she approached the open area beside the bed. She had the bag, which she set on the floor, then straightened, a clear package in hand. She unfolded it, revealing a clear jumpsuit, and pulled it on over her clothing, then zipped it up, tucking her hair into its cap and tightening the neckline of it. She had booties also, and my concern bloomed as she pulled them over her socks.

It was a kill suit. She looked like the serial killer on one of those shows she loved, and as much as my optimistic mind tried desperately to find some other reason for her to be donning this protective garment, only one made sense. She didn't want blood spatter to get on her, or her DNA to get on one of these beautiful, precious girls.

The next thing out of the bag was a white blanket, which she unfurled like a flag before crouching to let it settle across the open wood floor. The familiar item made me instantly nauseous. I closed my eyes, trying to breathe as quietly as possible while fighting away the crime scene images I always associated with that fabric.

Lucy's hand, outstretched, her palm streaked with blood.

Her hair, matted and mussed, in a red, sticky pool.

Her knees splayed, the soft blue sleep shorts gaping open at the legs, showing a peek of yellow underwear.

Perla straightened out the corners of the blanket, then returned to the shopping bag, where she pulled out a few more items, placing them down on the blanket. I knew what they were, even with the dim light and my limited view. A Ouija board. Cupcakes. Playing cards. She stood, moved the bag to the side, and withdrew the final item, one that flashed in the dim glow of Sophie's night-light. A long and skinny knife.

Oh God. She was going to put the girls on the blanket and then kill them all. Maybe leave our daughter's neck half-intact, just to make the recreation as accurate as possible. But then what? Hope that I woke up from their screams? Rushed in and get caught red-handed, like Leewood?

Unlike Leewood, I wouldn't lie for her. Keep a stoic silence and serve decades behind bars. I would crucify her, but she had to know that—which meant I was probably the final victim of this insane plan.

She crept forward, and if I was going to do anything, I needed to do it now while she was distracted and focused on the bed. Once she realized the girls weren't there, she'd be on the defense and I'd be a sitting duck in a closet, without a way to defend myself.

I opened the door and rushed toward her.

I grabbed her from behind, one arm locked across her chest, the other wrapped in a monkey grip around the wrist of the hand holding the knife. She didn't release it. She bucked back against me, attempting to free herself as she squirmed in my grasp.

"Stop it, Perla." I spoke in her ear, my voice low.

"What are you—" She sagged against me and let out a strangled cry of relief. "Shit, Grant, you scared the shit out of me. What are you doing?"

"I'm stopping you." I squeezed her wrist harder. "Drop the knife, Perla."

"Okay, I will, just let me go. Jesus, is this a sexual thing?" she hissed. "Because it seems a little late in our marriage to play a Dom."

"You can't kill them, Perla. I won't let you do it."

"Kill who? Grant, what are you talking about?" She suddenly raised her foot sharply, and her heel hit the most sensitive part of my nuts. The air in my chest released in a sudden oomph of pain, and I staggered back, my grip loosening on her. She spun around and raised the knife, rushing forward, and if I'd ever had any doubt, it vanished in the moment our eyes locked and I saw the dead vacancy there. No emotion about the decision to kill her husband. No torment over the act she had come into this room to commit.

I grabbed her arm, stopping the downward slash of the knife, then twisted the appendage behind her back, yanking it upward. She gasped out a cry of pain. "Okay, okay, please, please, Grant, stop. That hurts."

"You were about to kill our daughter."

"I wasn't," she protested.

I closed my hand over her latex-gloved fist, keeping it pinned to the knife. "Tell me the truth, or I will kill you."

"You won't," she choked out.

"I will, because I know the truth about Lucy."

She went very still at that. There was a full-page confession in that silence.

"My father killed Lucy," she said weakly. "You know that. Why would you—" She let out a sob, but I was done falling for her lies.

"Your father told me what happened."

She didn't ask when or how, and I wondered if she knew about my visits and what they had entailed.

"Why?" I rasped as I wrenched her hand with the knife around and placed the edge of the blade to her throat. There was the scar from when Leewood had cut her, and I wondered if he'd felt the same mix of repulsion and fear when he had been in this same position.

"You can be good and still kill someone, Tim." That's what he had said to me, and I had sneered at the thought. What was it I had said? That wanting someone to die and killing them were two different things? That we couldn't help our emotions, but we could control our actions?

My emotions, right now, were a tsunami, and I didn't have time to sort the good from the bad. Perla had approached our daughter's bed in a kill suit, a knife in hand. Perla had killed my sister.

My hand tightened on hers, but I couldn't bring myself to move.