Page 53 of The Familiar Stranger

I couldn’t leave until I was sure.

I raced toward our room, finding yet another note stuck to the door.

It read:

If I wanted her dead, she would be.

You best hurry along now.

Tick-tock.

Unlocking the bedroom door, I found Maddie on the bed, still snoring away. I searched the room. Found nothing. He wasn’t there.

He was gone … on his way to the beach.

I grabbed a pen and paper.

Maddie,

I’ve gone to the beach.

This is something I need to do alone.

I’m sorry.

I tucked it beneath the lamp on her nightstand, feeling guilty, knowing I needed to get away before she stopped me. I knew the wrath I’d face for doing so later, but I refused to let anyone else in my circle get hurt.

I told myself it was the right thing to do, the only thing to do.

It had to be this way.

This was amano a manofight now.

CHAPTER35

A gust of icy wind lashed at my cheeks, jolting my senses awake. Each breath felt like a spark of electricity coursing through my veins, fueling me with an unshakable resolve. Though my skin prickled and my lungs burned, the cold sharpened my focus, bracing me for the battle that lay ahead.

If my instincts are right.

I stood atop a sand dune and scanned my surroundings. There wasn’t a soul in sight, an eerie sensation. Half a block behind me, residents and visitors of the quaint beach town were going about their lives, working and playing.

But not here on the beach, under the ominous gray of the winter sky.

He’d taunted me to come here.

The killer … he had to be watching me now.

In an uncharacteristic move—for me, at least—I lifted my middle fingers in the air and turned a full 360, shouting, “I’m here!”

The only response was the whistle of the wind, its silence as majestic as much as it was foreboding.

I sat where I’d been standing, the coolness of the sand seeping through the fabric of my jeans. Then I stood and walked along the shoreline, picking up seashells, the foamy edges of the water almost touching my running shoes, then backing away.

The push and pull of nature was never ending.

But the push and pull of this case needed to end, to be finished once and for all.

I needed my life back.

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