Dryden watched the phone’s screen.

The symbol didn’t appear again. It wasn’t going to, either; there wouldn’t be any more texts. Right now the person on the other end was making a call instead—to the people he had mentioned in his earlier message. The third-party people he preferred not to use. He would get them moving now. Frantically.

Because he knew the clock was ticking, didn’t he? He had already given Dryden the stepfather’s address.

Way up in the canopy, the blue jay screamed again.

Dryden stood up from where he had knelt over the dead body. He stared down through the pines at the switchback road. Thought of the route to Stockton Canyon. Thought of the stepfather, waiting there, unaware of trouble coming down on him. Maybe the woman was there, too, whoever she was.

Twenty minutes’ drive time from here.

Twenty minutes to get there and warn them.

He could be there sooner if he ignored the speed limit, within reason.

He thought about it for another five seconds.

Then he closed the text app on the phone, brought up the keypad and dialed 9-1-1.

Fifteen miles to the northeast, and four miles from Thousand Oaks, Danica Ellis pulled into the driveway of a house she’d hoped to never see again.

She hadn’t seen it in, what, nineteen years?

She killed her engine and stared at the place.

Nothing about it had changed. The same green ceramic wind chimes hung from their brace next to the kitchen window. The same black lava rocks filled the planter beds along the front walk. The tan brick exterior was the same. The dark blue shutters were the same.

The man inside must have changed, at least on the surface. Carl Gilmore had been fifty-three when Danica had last seen him. He would be seventy-two now.

Staring at the house, replaying the last time she had walked out that door—slamming it behind her, hearing some knick-knack in the hallway fall and shatter, feeling deeply satisfied at the sound—she found her hand wanting to put the key back in the ignition.

He doesn’t know you’re out here. It’s not too late to forget about this. Don’t think of it as a wasted trip. Chalk it up to a long pretty drive down the coast.

Who else could she go to, though? The few friends she had were either office workers or B-school students. She didn’t know any of them well enough to ask for their help with something like this. What help could they give, anyway?