Amanda fumbled around and brought out her phone. She entered the pass code and clicked around. Then she extended the phone to me, almost pressing it against my face.

“Who is that?” she asked.

It took me a moment to take the phone from her hand and hold it in such a way that I could actually see the screen. Amanda seemed frantic, her energy odd and rushed. It felt like being in the car with a nervous cat.

I recognized the face on the screen. Immediately.

“That’s Kyle Dornan. So?”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I saw him up close at Blake’s house. I stood face-to-face with him while he waved a broken liquor bottle at me. You saw him too.”

Amanda shook her head, her cheeks still flushed. Her eyes were wide and searching. Scared, I realized. She was scared. Rattled.

“What?”

“Ryan, that is not the guy who came to the house this morning. Whoever came to our door and said he was sorry the girl got killed, it was not Kyle Dornan.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

The wind picked up even more outside the car. It gently rocked the vehicle from side to side. A storm brewed, the clouds darkening behind the jagged rooflines of the houses.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’re just remembering it wrong.”

“You’re telling me how I remember something?”

I shifted my body to better face her. I handed the phone back. “You were under stress. You had this man, this maniac, pushing against the door. You thought you were fighting for your life. For Henry’s life. You said that yourself. Your brain was flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. How can your memory be reliable?”

Her lips parted. A little disbelief. A little anger. “His face was six inches from mine. I felt spit hit my face when he was talking. I thought this man who came to the door, whoever he was, was going to come in and hurt Henry. You better believe I imprinted his face on my mind’s eye. I wanted to be able to describe him to the police. I wanted to make sure of that.”

“But when Rountree came to the house, when we talked about him, you agreed with the description. Short hair. My height. Clean-cut.”

“Hell, Ryan, that’s half the men on the planet. He was unremarkable looking. Unremarkable in general. Except he wanted to tear the door down and get at me for some reason. He was foaming at the mouth. Other than that, yeah, he looked like a regular guy. I thought we were talking about the same person. It seemed that way.”

Rain splattered against the windshield. I stared out through the speckled drops.

“This doesn’t make sense,” I said. “You’re saying someone else came to the house looking for me. Or Blake. Someone else said it was a shame the girl got killed. I don’t get it. . . .”

“I don’t either.”