Now that she said it out loud, Morgan knew all of those things to be true. Suddenly, she was transported back to the convenience store floor, crouched in the candy aisle, waiting for the nausea to pass, listening to his shoes stick to the tile.

The red treads. She remembered them more vividly now. Their imperfect edges. The smudges of black they left in their wake. “He spray-painted his shoes,” she said.

Grandpa Teddy made a noise deep in his throat. His eyebrows scrunched toward the middle of his forehead. “Why would someone do a thing like that?”

Morgan shrugged, though she’d watched enough Dateline and America’s Most Wanted to know that criminals covered recognizable features on their clothing all the time. “Could have been covering up a logo,” she offered. “Or maybe the shoes were too distinctive.”

Grandpa Teddy wet his lips. He drew in a breath as he looked to the lighthouse again. Finally, for the first time since they’d been sitting here, he turned to Morgan. “Sounds like you’ve got something else to tell that detective now, huh?”

Morgan sighed. She could feel Hudson’s business card burning a hole in her jacket pocket, and she allowed herself a moment to fantasize. A reward for $62,000 was a lot of money. If this information led to the arrest of the cop killer, she could travel, actually get out of Black Harbor, not just a ninety-minute drive across state lines. Maybe she’d fly to another country, another continent. Leave her past behind. Live anonymously.

Unless it was all just a ruse to get her to talk. Whatever the fine print was, Morgan doubted she would meet all its requirements. She never measured up to what people expected. Although, she had nothing more to lose at this point. She exchanged looks with Grandpa Teddy, the quiet acknowledging smile they’d grown accustomed to. At the very least, she might get her camera and her car back.

10 HUDSON

The Porsche was hardly recognizable from the photos kept in Clive Reynolds’s file. That car had been sleek and jet black. It looked fast with its streamlined silhouette and whale tail spoiler. This thing looked like something that had been dug out of its watery grave. The once fire engine–red interior was faded to the color of the Ruins ticket, and its headlights were opaque. Patches of verdigris sprawled across its hood. Through the open driver’s side window, Hudson noted the severed seat belt and the empty passenger seat. The human remains had been transported to the medical examiner’s office.

“It’s like online dating, right?” said Kole. “The pictures and the real thing don’t have a lot in common.”

Hudson smiled and allowed himself a momentary time-out from the investigation to wonder how much experience Sergeant Kole had with online dating. Everyone knew he had been involved with a transcriber a few years ago, who no longer worked at the PD. The relationship had only surfaced because it was entangled in an officer-involved shooting and the downfall of one of Black Harbor’s most notorious drug dealers, the Candy Man. It seemed uncharacteristic of Kole to have a relationship under the microscope like that. He was reserved and sure of himself. No, Hudson decided. He would not have an online dating profile.