My flesh shrinks at the sound of her voice. She’s moving something on the armrest of the chair. Pushing and pulling it backward and forward like a child with a toy car. I stare at her, open-mouthed. It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room. It’s the toy train I saw on the wall, all those weeks ago, the day I went to the university. Was she behind the phone calls, too? She must have been.

I gape at her in dismay. My mind is awhir. Did Ross set me up for this? But no, he wanted me to go with him to Aberdeen. Why the hell didn’t I say yes? Now I’m trapped. Trapped with the woman who’s waited twelve years to exact her revenge. The woman who has preyed on my vulnerability and need for friendship from the very first time she set foot in this house. I think of her tears in the study the night of the party. Crocodile tears. All that hatred is still fresh in her mind. It always has been.

Escape strategies spark in my mind like fireworks, but they all fizzle out, one by one.

“I’m not trying to sell you anything, I promise,” she says.

I frown, confused. What does she mean? And why is she speaking like that, in an Australian accent? It sounds strangely familiar.

She leans forward, smiling sweetly. “I just need five minutes of your time.”

Of course. Ruby Orchard. The reporter I put the phone down on. There was never any story about Elodie Stevens. It was another one of Catherine’s strategies to draw me toward her, to reel me in. And it worked, didn’t it? I took the bait, like she knew I would.

My body is rigid with tension. “How did you get in?”

She smiles again. But now it’s the kind of smile that Melissa Davenport and Bethany Charles used to give me. On the surface, it’s just an ordinary smile, but there’s cruelty lurking beneath.

“I had the foresight to get another set of keys cut.”

Of course. It was probably the first thing she did.

Panic is rising inside me, but I won’t let her see it. I won’t. I straighten my spine and force myself to hold her gaze.

“I want you to give me my keys and leave right now.”

She wags her finger at me as if I’m a naughty little girl. “Don’t give me orders, Lizzie. They’re not your keys anyway. And if anyone’s going to leave this house, it’ll be you. But only when you tell me the truth.”

A fist of anger clenches inside me. “You can’t intimidate me anymore, Catherine. I’m not that frightened little girl you used to terrorize in the middle of the night.”