Caitlin’s phone was buzzing, and she stopped, apologized, then rapidly texted to someone on her phone. “My friend who brought me to the bar is freaking out that I left.” She texted some more, then put the phone away. They kept walking.

“Tell me what happened between your stepmother and Jake Richter,” she said. “I know what the police told me, but that’s it. She stabbed him before you got there?”

Harry told her everything that had happened after he’d been admitted to the hospital. He told her about waking up and thinking that the man he’d seen outside of the motel was John Richards, and how Alice told him that John had once been her stepfather. He told her about going home and using Phone Finder on his phone to learn that Alice was at John’s house, and deciding that he needed to see him one more time just to be sure. He told her in detail what Alice had looked like, the blood on her neck, that he’d seen Jake dead in the kitchen, and that before the police came, Alice told him Jake had said Caitlin was in the trunk of the car.

“You must have thought I was dead,” she said.

“I did. And then when I opened the trunk you were just laying there, not moving at all.”

“I told myself to pretend I was dead, to just be still. For some reason, even though I knew it was you in the garage, I couldn’t make myself move.”

“Why didn’t he kill you, do you think?” Harry asked.

“He came to the motel to find out if you knew it was him, I think. That’s what he was asking me, anyway, and when I didn’t tell him anything, he hit me again and put me in the trunk of his car. I remember that he was gentle, and some part of me was thankful.”

“I think he was insane,” Harry said.

“Ya think?”

Harry laughed. “He didn’t say anything?”

“He did. He said something about being tired after he put me in the trunk, and then he took a tie from his jacket pocket and he rolled me onto my side and bound my hands together. And I let him do it.”

“You’d been knocked out, right?”

“Not really. A little. He’d hit me twice, and my nose was broken. I could have fought back, but I didn’t.”

“Maybe that was the smart move. Maybe if you’d fought back, then he would have killed you.”

“I know. That’s what everyone tells me, but I still can’t stop thinking about it. I just gave up. I think I was telling myself that it was my best chance, that he had somehow changed his mind about killing me, and I didn’t want to do anything that would make him change his mind again.”

“It was a good instinct.”