Marshall swallowed the last of his toast. “I agree it’s not a bluff. She’s after blood.” He was remembering Spence, too, I thought. The pills she’d convinced me were roofies. “But she knows this place intimately. With the bird’s-eye view she has, she can see the parking lot. I bet she can see the road, too, for miles, and it’s the only way in. Maybe there’s hiking trails, but she knows those, too. Meanwhile she’s told us she’s leaving the baby elsewhere and driving to meet us. So if we, for example, send cops in early to set up an ambush, she’s already there, watching them arrive. If she sees or hears anyone but you and Trey, she has plenty of time to—” His voice cut out abruptly. He didn’t want to say what she would do, but he didn’t have to. By the time the police made their way to the hidey-hole, they would find only the bodies.

Trey had gotten up while Marshall spoke. He was pacing, jittery from caffeine and sleeplessness and waiting. “You think she would leave Robert alone in that cabin when she comes to meet Bree? What if you get to the cabin and Lexie is there. Armed. With our kid.”

I answered first. “She won’t have Lexie anywhere nearby. Period.”

Not only because we could send the police and she wanted to keep Lexie’s hands clean. Of all the things she’d told me, that one had the most of my faith. But because she wouldn’t ask Lexie to harm a baby. What Coral had done to Geoff had a ricochet. Coral had felt it. She wouldn’t want her frail, newly sober child to do that. I knew it deep in my own motherhood, so solid and strong that I’d bet Robert’s life on it. Not that I had another choice.

We spent our last hours chewing it over, the three of us, back and forth and around and around. Trey was mutinous. He hated the idea of me walking up alone to meet with her while he sat all the way down the hill in the car in relative safety.

I didn’t want Trey to come, period. I was afraid she’d kill him outright, but Marshall said she would have to be a marine sharpshooter to pick Trey off from the top of the hill. But what if she got lucky? Or what if she saw us coming and walked down to the parking lot to meet us with a shotgun? Trey said there was no way in hell he was sitting home, though, and Marshall agreed. Coral needed to see Trey arrive. We had to look like we were complying. We argued about that until it was almost time to go, recycling the same points and fears and hopes without making any headway, churning fruitlessly. Marshall’s plan won out.