Hudson kicked and tried to wrestle out of Bennett’s grip, but Bennett was larger and stronger. When he tried to push his head into the boards to gain leverage, he felt nothing but cold air. His shoulders were off the dock, floating above the ice.

This was it. This was his end. He’d failed to finish Garrison’s unfinished business. He’d failed to save Morgan. His killer’s wild, bloodshot eyes would be the last thing he saw before he died. And then the light that shimmered behind them flared, like stars exploding. Suddenly, Bennett’s grip relaxed from his neck, and as he lurched forward, Hudson saw a wood-handled ax sunk into the back of his skull.

Flecks of red spattered Morgan’s snow-white cheeks. Her dark hair was matted to her face, her lips were blue. A stain plumed on the front of her jacket, soaking her sleeve, he noticed as she reached for him. But it was too late. Bennett’s body fell forward, taking Hudson down with it.

They crashed through the ice, and all 206 bones in Hudson’s body shattered. Every molecule of oxygen in his veins froze. He’d never known cold or pain like this. Drowning, now, was different from drowning off the pier in Lake Michigan. It was still, here. Quiet. There were no waves to thrash him about, no riptide to pull him under. Just darkness and stillness. He was in a vacuum, a black hole where light and sound didn’t exist, and when he began to think that perhaps this was death—that he’d taken his last breath on the dock—he hit the bottom. Bennett landed beside him, his weight freeing sediments that had long since settled on the floor of the pond. Hudson kicked away from him, and reached into the weeds, blindly searching for anything to gain purchase, when his fingers closed around the rusted links of a chain.

43 MORGAN

She was a snowflake. Cold. Pale. But not dangerous, not anymore, she thought as she lay on the dock, staring upward at the star-spangled sky. The precipitation lighted on her lips, her skin. It didn’t even melt. She could lie here and let the fresh snow be her burial. It wouldn’t be the worst way to go. Not after all she had done.

Bennett was dead. She’d felt his life drain from his body the second she drove the ax into his skull. He shared the same watery grave as his father now. Their father.

We’re made of the same stuff, can’t you see?

No, they weren’t. Clive Reynolds hadn’t made her what she was. The house on Winslow Street had. The Ruins had. Her real family—her parents and Grandpa Teddy—had. She would miss them terribly. She wondered if they would miss her just as much.

And Hudson. Had he died on impact, or was he still down there, fighting for breath?