Norton’s anguished cry contorted his face into a mask of misery, and for the first time I saw the resemblance between these family members. Jade wore the same expression now. Her father held a knife to her grandfather’s throat, and she’d just realized Miles and Norton killed the man she thought she loved.

Raking the wet hair out of her eyes, Jade let out a wail and lurched forward. With the three of us blocking her path to the house, there was nowhere for her to run. Nowhere except the flooded dock. Waves rolled over the submerged planks and the water was past her knees, but she moved too fast for me to catch her as she passed.

Miles threw Norton aside and went after his daughter while I beat a path through the waves. The boards of the dock were slippery, the current strong. I was bigger than Jade and even I had to fight not to fall. A few yards away Miles was up to his waist, and then his neck. His strokes were clean but the rain on the water created a blinding, disorienting haze, and he was soon way off track.

Up ahead a wave crashed against Jade, flinging her body sideways. Her head went under, came up slick as a seal, went under again. I saw a pale arm lift and flail, grasping at air, and then she disappeared completely into the cold, dark water.

“Jade!” The men’s screams rang in my ears, but a rush of water snuffed them out as I plunged headlong into the river. The cold knocked the air from my lungs and left me breathless. I tried to keep my eyes on the place where she’d gone under, but it was all I could do to stay afloat. My aching muscles seized up almost immediately. My feet were anvils pulling me down. Inside my mouth my teeth throbbed as if I’d chewed aluminum foil. Without my flashlight everything was white froth and black water and that terrible, glacial, mind-numbing cold.

It was reckless. I wasn’t a strong swimmer, didn’t know the river at all. I just couldn’t let another girl die. But I have. I did. Jade was nowhere—no Jade, no Miles. Just the river that swallowed Jasper Sinclair, and now me.

Through the rush of water in my ears and the rain and the thunder, I heard a call. When the waves around me went silver I thought it was the lightning again, a flash so bright it turned night into day, but then I saw it. A boat. It rolled and pitched, towering above me where I swam. Something fat and soft landed next to me and I reached for it. Suddenly I could float. I clenched my teeth and craned to see out of the water. What I saw was Maureen McIntyre.

Leaning over the gunwale.

Reaching for my hand.

THIRTY-TWO

So when you left the house to go after Norton, you knew. Norton had an accomplice. The killer was Miles.”