Anthony. Anthony.

In the second it took him to process the name, I’d turned the knob on the door and slipped into the night. Where was Lucas? In my confusion I thought he must be out here somewhere.

There was someone at the end of the dock. For one fleeting second, the figure was clearly illuminated against the darkness. Lucas! That was where I ran—toward him, toward help. But the figure dissolved the closer I got. Became nothing, a ghost. And Cole—Anthony—was behind me on the dock. Advancing rapidly, his strange, awful arms still pulled behind him as if some force inside were wrestling him.

I turned and faced him. “What are you going to do? Put me in a coma?”

“If you’re lucky,” he said.

“You know you can’t.”

“Why? Because you’ve been so kind to me?”

“Because you’ll go to jail.”

“I don’t exist,” he said. “There’s no such person as Cole Anthony. Cole Anthony will disappear. Then you and I will both be gone.”

There was no getting past him on the skinny dock. The only way out was the dark bay behind me. I did what I had to do. I jumped.

Chapter 31

31

The water was icy, and the shock of it slammed into me, stopped my breath. I gasped. Breathed. Moved my arms and legs reflexively. My waterlogged shirt and pants weighed me down. But I didn’t need to go very far. The night was thick with fog, and he wouldn’t be able to see me when I resurfaced. I’d be nothing more than a rock, a seal, a sea wave.

I broke the surface, trying not to splash or breathe.

“I just want to talk to you,” he bellowed from the dock.

I went under again and swam out into the deep water. The trick was to stay underwater as long as I could, but not so long that I’d gasp when I resurfaced. Everything depended on disappearing and reappearing in silence. Getting as far from him as possible without him knowing what direction I’d gone.

I felt something brush my body, a strand of seaweed I hoped. I broke the surface. He would think I’d stuck close to shore. That I was swimming along looking for a place to go ashore. But I was going straight out to where the water was deep. I had a destination in mind: the houseboat. That small red cradle of a boat I’d watched rocking in the bay every day of my life.