Page 97 of Heartbreak Bay

My mistake could kill the woman I love.

“Please, Tyler,” I say. My voice is shaking now. “Come on, man,pleasedon’t do this. She doesn’t deserve this. I’m telling you, she doesn’t.”

“It’s not my choice anymore,” he says. “It’s hers. And yours. Are you going to play, Sam? Because if you don’t, and you could have saved her—I know how that will feel for you. Next time it’ll be you on that bridge.”

He’s right. Oh God, he’s right. I don’t know if the kids are getting through, if anyone is working on this. But I have to try to keep him on the phone. Gwen told me he was at Salah Point, but if she was wrong, if he’s somewhere else ... the phone trace can pinpoint him exactly. Save her life.

I swallow a terrible mix of despair and bitter rage, and say, “I’m clicking now.”

I tap the mouse button.

And I see Gwen. She’s standing, swaying, looking up at something I can’t see. I can’t tell where she is, just a room with shelving. And I can’t look at the details. She fills my world. “Oh God,” I whisper. “Oh God, baby.” She looks desperate, beaten, in pain. Afraid. I’m afraid that he’s brought me here to watch her die, and I can’t, Ican’t let that happen.

“I’m going to ask you a very important question,” Tyler says. “Do you want her to live? No matter what?”

I say, “Yes.Yes.” There is no other possible choice.

“I thought so.” He sounds vaguely disappointed. “That was very predictable.”

I stare at the screen, unable to look away. Afraid to blink.

I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than to be standing with her right now.

27

GWEN

The lighthouse’s beacon, I realize now, is working, after all. It’s blinking steadily. Calling me right toward him.

I climb the steep hill, sweating, filthy with dried blood and mud and mold. Heartsick but resolute.

There’s only a single door on the bottom level, large enough that—like in the cannery—a forklift could be driven inside, if necessary. I reach for the doorknob. Hesitate. I look up, and the camera looks down.

“You asked if I ever found the man who took my sister,” Jonathan says through a speaker near the top of the door. “He never did it again. It took her four minutes to die, Gina. Four minutes.”

I don’t want to feel sympathy for him. I can’t. “Did you kill him?” I ask.

“I don’t kill people,” he says. He means it. “I’ve never killed anyone directly. Could you die in here? Yes, but it’s possible I could too. That seems fair.”

“Is Kezia here? Is she still alive?”

“Yes, and yes,” he says. “Come in. There’s nothing that will hurt you on the other side of the door.”

I take him at his word. In his own weird way, I think he’s trying to be completely honest with me. I can’t—won’t—do him the same favor.

The doorknob turns. I step into what I suppose would be a storage room—large, perfectly round, with fixed shelving on all sides that is stocked with cans and boxes. Not a soul in sight.

I look up. The tower’s staircase curls up in a dizzying, narrowing spiral. Off to the side is an elevator, and I head for it, but when I press the button, it’s locked down. No power to it at all.

I make for the stairs. And something occurs to me. Something important that just ... doesn’t fit.

And then it does fit. The missing piece in a horrible, horrible puzzle.

“Would you rather die, or see someone you love die?” he asks me. I freeze with my foot on the first step. “It’s a simple question, Gina. I answered it when I was seventeen years old.”

“I’d rather die,” I say. And it’s true. Utterly true. “But you’re not going to make me kill myself. If someone I love dies, it’s becauseyoukilled them, Jonathan. Just like someone killed your sister.” I take a step up, then another. I don’t know when something will happen, but I know it’s coming. The air feels alive with it. It’s time to use what I just worked out. The little clue he gave me. “You know what I wonder, though?”

“What?” he says. I’ve been moving slowly, testing for traps, but there doesn’t seem to be anything except stairs to climb. No rooms, no traps, nothing. I move faster.

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