Whom did she fear? Patrick Corley?

Or was Corley no less a victim than Maddison?

This is something bigger than you’ll ever understand, Thorne. Stay away from her or you’re finished, I’m finished, she’s finished. If she doesn’t stay focused on her work, we’re all dead.

What might be happening to Maddison right now?

How could she be Emily down to the birthmark below her navel?

That didn’t matter for the moment. The answer to that would come later. All that mattered now was not losing her.

The only place to look for her was the stone house on Rock Point Lane, which Richard Mathers had called haunted and which David had found decidedly strange.

However, Maddison had warned him against seeking her.

He could not be patient, as she had advised. He had lost Emily, and he felt that he was losing Maddison—somehow Emily reborn—and he would not survive that second loss, not psychologically.

If it was dangerous to approach the house on the coast, if he would be putting her life and his own at extreme risk, then before he went there, he needed answers to at least a few of the mysteries that had swept him out of his ordinary life and left him now at sea.

Maybe there were no answers in the former Jessup house. Maybe everything Ronny told him was a lie. But if he went there and saw for himself, he wouldn’t know less than he did now, and he might uncover a clue, a stunning truth, with which pieces of the puzzle would interlock, bringing him at least a modicum of understanding.

Highway 101 south to San Jose, to Salinas, to Soledad, to Paso Robles . . . The entire trip from Folsom to Santa Barbara required eight hours, and he arrived at the latter city at 7:04 p.m.

The Santa Ynez Mountains to the east were cauldron black and dragon backed against the midnight-blue sky, and the sea to the west lay darker, no moon yet mirrored on it. The city glimmering across the flats and foothills seemed sinister. This was a town he had often visited and enjoyed, but not this night.

If Santa Barbara seemed acrawl with something malignant, perhaps there was no place on earth at this moment that would not feel sinister to David.

In a hardware store, he purchased a four-rung step stool and other items that he would need. He found a sporting goods store, where he bought a small backpack and a pair of hiking boots.

He wanted to drive into the Santa Ynez Valley that very night, to the Jessup house, and do the grisly job that needed to be done. But he was strung out, grainy eyed, too weary to cope with what he knew lay ahead and also meet what unknowns he might encounter.