Susan nodded numbly. She didn’t know what to say. See you soon? Call me later? Don’t get yourself killed? So she didn’t say anything. She cradled her paper bag of clothes and walked through the gate. She heard the mechanical gears of the gate closing the moment she’d cleared the property line, and she looked back, but Archie had already turned and was walking back over the bridge to the island. Sanchez. Sanchez. She was suddenly very cold and she dropped the bag and dug out her red sweatshirt and put it on over the gold dress and zipped it up and put up the hood. She got her phone out of her purse and checked for reception. One bar. She picked up the bag again and started down the road, her eyes fixed on the phone screen in her hand. Two bars, and she’d call Henry. The road didn’t have sidewalks, so she shuffled along the edge, her ballet flats scuffing against the pavement. There was no one around. Newspapers, safely ensconced in plastic bags, poked out of the mailboxes that lined the road. The dried leaves that had fallen during the night blanketed the grass, waiting for the leaf blower. Crows squawked in the fir trees. Two bars.

She didn’t hear the car until it was right upon her. She stepped onto the grass as it rolled past her on the right. A black, industrial-looking van. No markings. It pulled over to the side of the road just ahead of her and waited. Susan froze. Archie had said that someone would pick her up, but he didn’t say it was going to be Ted Bundy. She would call for a cab if she had to, thank you very much. She was scanning her phone contacts for Henry’s number when she heard the van backing up. It was rolling in reverse right toward her. She didn’t have time to react. She was too startled. Too sleep-deprived. Too flummoxed. When the van got so close she could have kicked it, it stopped, and the back door opened. A man in jeans and a sweatshirt and a day’s worth of beard held out his hand to her.

“FBI,” he said. “Get in.”

Chapter 17

CHAPTER

17