“Anne, do not go there. I am calling the authorities—”
“He has Melanie,” I cut her off. “And he thinks he won. He thinks I’m home crying.”
I hung up.
Four hours later, I was in a rental car driving through the ink-black desert toward Palm Springs.
The headlights sliced through the darkness. On the passenger seat lay the brass key, my father’s old spare revolver from my bedside safe, and my phone.
Grace had been calling non-stop, but I didn’t answer. This wasn’t her fight anymore. It was mine.
The GPS guided me away from the bright lights of the luxury high-rises and down a secluded, unpaved road flanked by towering fan palms. At the very end of the trail stood a low-slung, mid-century house, dark and shrouded in overgrown brush.
Parked in the driveway was a black SUV.
Beside it sat Lucas’s rental car.
