Chapter Fifty-Three

SHAUNA STOPPED THE car at the side of the road and turned the engine off. The gently descending evening sun only touched the outer trees of the woods on Norman Driver’s property. Beyond them, Shauna could see only blackness. While the front of Driver’s land, with the long driveway and the towering oak trees, was clear, the back half seemed dense. She wondered if there were bodies buried here. Shauna couldn’t see Norman Driver bringing the victims of his drug trade to his own home for disposal, those nosy cops, dutiful citizens, or junkies about to flip that presented him with problems. But, knowing what he had done to Georgette Winter-Lee, perhaps there were other kinds of bodies here. Gloucester had only been Driver’s home for a year or so. Had the same urge that had driven him to attack Georgette taken hold of him here, or was she his only ghost? Shauna didn’t know.

She planned to find out.

The rifle lay on the seat beside her, the shotgun in the trunk, where she had placed it after killing the boy in the woods. She supposed she would need both, having only vague plans about what she would do when she got to Driver’s home. If he was away, she’d lie in wait for him. If he was there, she hoped to prolong whatever scenario unfolded. Make him sorry. Make him confess things. Humiliate him again and enjoy herself.

She turned and reached into the back of the car, tested the lid of the box that contained the evidence that had the potential to bury Driver. It was shut tight.

She had popped open the driver’s side door with two bullet holes in it and was about to step out when Marris’s phone buzzed in the glove compartment. Shauna slid back into the car.

On the screen, a photograph. It was of her friend, Bill Robinson. He was lying slumped against the wall of an old, wood-paneled room. His lip was split, blood running in a steady stream from his mouth onto the chest of his white shirt. Shauna saw that his wrists were bound in front of him with thin black plastic zip ties.

A text message followed the photograph.

Twenty minutes, or I put a bullet in his head.

The number wasn’t the one she knew to be Driver’s, but she figured the text had to be from him. Shauna exhaled, heard the shuddering of her frightened breath. Another message came, this one with a pin dropped at the center of a map. She tapped the pin and the map spun out, revealing a blue, glowing path. She had a decision to make now. Follow directions into what was almost certainly an ambush and try to save her friend. Or lie here in wait for Driver, and sacrifice Bill. Shauna put the phone down on the dashboard and pressed her head against the steering wheel.

The old Shauna, the woman she had been until two days ago, when two intruders came into her house and put a gun in her face, would have rushed to Bill’s aid no matter the consequences. But she was a new person now. Someone who got revenge. Someone who ran from capture. Someone who had killed, coldly and deliberately. What did friendship mean to this new woman?

She put a hand on the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.