Nic hesitated, but then bolted into the woods. Daisy took a shot, but there were too many trees to get off a clean one.

Nic heard Daisy scream as she ran through the trees.

“I will kill you!”

Chapter Fifty-five

Day eighteen

“I will kill you!” Daisy screams. The man with the shotgun is not more than five yards away now.

I watch my child escape. I watch her until she disappears and I want to laugh out loud with relief and joy.

I hear the sirens. They’ve found us.

Daisy’s face changes. “Okay, see—now I have to leave. Do this shit all over again. Do you know how hard it is to disappear?”

The man shakes his head. “Like hell you are. Don’t move,” he says.

Daisy looks surprised.

But there’s little time now.

She pulls Alice in front of her. A human shield. Her own daughter.

She turns the gun to point at her daughter’s head. She presses it hard into the soft flesh of her temple.

Alice whimpers. “Mommy?”

The man is in awe as he watches the mother of this child, his child, move toward him.

“Drop the gun and take us through the woods the way you came. Back to the inn. Then give us a car. Or I swear to you, I will put a bullet in her head.”

The man is wide-eyed as he lets these words reach into his soul, the way they do mine. They do not have anyplace else to go.

His hands tremble but he holds the gun steady. I watch Daisy’s finger pull back the safety lever. I hear the click. She knows—I can feel it—she knows he won’t fire that shotgun. He will stand there in a perpetual state of human conflict, wanting her dead, but afraid of hitting his daughter. Afraid she will pull the trigger first. He will do exactly what she tells him now. And then she will be free.

I am there again, five years ago, turning the corner on my street. The corner just before our driveway. I am worried that something is wrong. I can feel the anger that will come when I find out nothing is—that it was just Nicole being a teenager. Both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road. Thoughts on what I might find inside my house.

I feel my feet move. I feel a heavy rock in my hands. I feel eyes turn.

But I am there five years ago. Turning the corner, seeing the flash of something. What is it? What could have suddenly come into the road, into the path of my car?

I hear a crack. And a scream. My hands ache.

I am back there. My foot on the brakes, my hands turning the wheel. Hard enough. All of it is hard enough. I turn to see Annie safe on the other side.