Chapter 22

HOPE NEEDED TOstay calm. It was rational planning and control that was going to get her through this. As soon as she had the Spellings’ money, she was out of here. Off toward the sunrise on the gentle waves. She’d never look back on Sydney, on the feast of horrors the city had provided over her life. This town deserved to burn. She walked along the pier between the yachts and looked at the glowing city towers reflected in the black harbor. Soon she’d be underway.

Her plan was to leave behind the memories of what she had done to Jenny and Ken Spelling, along with the memories of her father and his sweaty, grabby hands. She’d try to replace the night beast he’d become after her mother’s death with the man she remembered from her early childhood, his eyes set on the horizon, one warm hand on hers as he taught her to direct the helm, taking them out toward the edge of forever. She’d leave them behind with the memories of her almost skeletal mother curled up in the tub she’d died in, with the smoke-saturated bedrooms of the Black Garter hotel where she’d worked for almost all of her adult life. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the red lamplight out the front of the house of horrors, the men smoking there, looking at their phones, talking about the girls inside and which ones provided which services. Soon, when she closed her eyes, it would be the Caribbean sun burning red light there. Or maybe Key Largo. She hadn’t decided yet.

As she powered the New Hope east out over the South Pacific, she’d jettison the images that sometimes zapped through her. Claudia’s howling mouth as she’d sailed downward into the blackness of the ocean, the anchor yanking her soundlessly into the dark. Her confused eyes as Hope had come into the kitchen after they’d secured the Spellings in the bathroom, the hammer in her fist.

I thought we were in this together.…

Her squeal of disbelief as Hope had raised the hammer above her head.