Breathing quickly, Archie turned back to the laptop. He threaded his hand through his hair, trying to think. He hadn’t downloaded anything. He never downloaded anything. He hardly ever used that computer. He had viewed the surveillance footage from the island on it. Could there have been malware in that? He had no idea. What else was there? He stepped up to the laptop, put his beer down on the counter beside it, and opened up his documents folder, consciously averting his gaze from the camera. He scanned through the list of his computer documents, looking for anything that might jar his memory, something that would click. It didn’t take long. As soon as he saw the document names, his spine went rigid. They were titled Ryan Motley 1–7. Each a different news story about a missing child, all victims of a serial killer named Ryan Motley. He’d downloaded those documents onto his computer from a flash drive almost three months ago. Susan had used the same flash drive to download the same documents onto her laptop. The flash drive had come from Gretchen. She’d given it to Archie over a year ago. Archie had kept it in a desk drawer while he tried to figure out what to do with it. Susan had finally forced the issue when she’d stolen it from his desk. Could Gretchen have masterminded such an elaborate plan that long ago?

The tingling sensation now burned down his arms. The small hairs on the back of his neck lifted. He recognized the feeling. It was the sensation of being watched.

Archie squinted at the tiny camera lens. It was like a small dark eye.

His lungs were heavy, like they were full of sand.

He wiped the sweat off his palms and then moved his fingers to the keyboard and clumsily opened a Word document. He could feel heat coming from the computer, hear its fan blowing. He blinked at the screen, ran his hand over his face, and told himself to stop right now, to call Ngyun, to call Henry, to slap the computer closed and turn around and walk away and wait. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, keeping his eyes set on the camera, he typed a single sentence:

Are you there?

Chapter 36

CHAPTER

36

Archie’s eyes stung from staring at the screen. Minutes passed. He had the feeling that Gretchen was poised with her fingers over a keyboard the entire time, and that she just wanted to make him wait. Then a letter appeared, and another. He was watching, live, as she typed her response below his question in the document he had opened. A word appeared, then a second and a third. Three words, but it was enough to make Archie feel that the floor had gone out from under him.

I

have

Susan.