“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I would. And that coy thing you’re doing? It’s not working.”

The woman’s lips twisted in a rare moment of fury. “Oh, I think it is. I’m the one outside the cage.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend…well, make that a close friend of your husband’s,” she said with a trace of bitterness.

“But you knew Jennifer.”

The woman’s eyes darkened.

Olivia had hit a nerve. Why? What was she to Jennifer?

“I really wasn’t too into that bitch,” her captor said as she smiled at a sudden thought, “but I’ve become, over the years, close with some of her friends. You know, the kind that just love to share secrets.”

Olivia’s stomach dropped. “You pumped them for information and then you killed them?” Of course she’d suspected this evil maniac was behind Shana and Lorraine’s deaths but saying it aloud in the gently swaying hold of a boat, confirming what she’d surmised, observing this woman’s smug self-satisfaction made it all the more real. More terrifying.

“They never saw it coming.”

Olivia wanted to throw up.

Stay cool. Use your wits.

“And they just got in the way.” She was assembling a camera and tripod, adjusting the legs, securing them with clamps she screwed into the floor and clipping all the pieces into place. Her nose wrinkled and she looked around. “God, it still smells down here. My father, he used to haul his dogs from port to port. Great Danes.”

“So you called me? You’re the one behind the phone calls, right?” Olivia asked, forcing the woman on topic, trying to learn more.

“My, God, you are just so sharp,” her captor mocked. “Your IQ must be in the stratosphere. Except you can’t be all that clever, can you, considering the circumstances? Here—” She bent down, flipped the photo album to a new page, one of Rick and Jennifer’s wedding, the bride in a white lacy dress and long train, the groom, so much younger than he was now, proud and handsome in a black tux. Again, there were blood drops on the plastic, drops that had been drizzled and smudged over their faces. “Here’s a good one.” She nudged the book forward with her toe and turned back to her camera.

Olivia’s skin crawled. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Setting up things so that you can pay.”

“Pay?”

“For your husband’s sins.”

“I don’t understand.”

The woman glanced over her shoulder and smiled smugly. “Of course you don’t.”

“Listen. Why don’t you just let me go?”