After the call, I went over the details of my plan. It was risky. It all hinged on whether Brad was able to set it up the way I’d asked him to, and I hated relying on someone else. I’d never done that before, and I wouldn’t have done it this time except that I needed to act fast. The detective I’d met the day before—Henry Kimball—was probably closing in on Brad and Miranda, or maybe just Brad, fast, and I wanted to get there first.
I sat for a moment in the car. I was in my darkest clothes—black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater that I wore over several layers, since the temperature was supposed to dip into the 30s. I wore my hiking shoes with the good soles, and a dark green winter hat in wool, pompom cut off, my braided hair tucked under it. I had a small gray backpack designed for day hikes, and I filled it with a pair of gloves, my stun gun, the penlight, a thermos with hot coffee, a flask filled with apricot brandy, the fish fillet knife with the leather sheaf, a Leatherman multi-tool, and a handful of plastic bags.
When I stepped out of the car, it was colder than I thought it would be, a steady brisk breeze coming off the ocean, and I wished that I had brought a windbreaker. I put the penlight in my back jeans pocket, pulled the backpack over both shoulders, locked the car behind me, and walked down off the bluff toward the start of the cliff walk. I walked as casually as possible in case I was being watched, imagining myself as the type of person who always strolled along the shore on moonlit nights. As far as I could tell, there was no one to see me, however, and I reached the cliff walk unobserved.
I had plenty of time, and walked slowly, only turning on the penlight once, when the footpath passed below an alcove of twisted trees. As stunning as the walk had been two days earlier on that blustery afternoon, it was more beautiful now—the vistas of the ocean were silver beneath the high white moon. I felt as though I’d stepped into a black-and-white movie from the 1930s, the ocean and the sky some fantasy projection of a perfect glittering evening, romantic and moody at the same time. I kept moving, all my senses prickling, as though I were a small animal that had emerged from its burrow into a giant world. Something rustled in a bayberry bush, and I paused, waiting to see if it was another animal like me, or just the pulsing wind from the ocean. I heard nothing else and kept moving. When I reached the end of the path, I crouched and looked at the looming house. In moonlight, it looked finished, its three-gabled roof outlined against the sky. The stretch of land between the ocean and the back of the house, which in daylight looked like chewed-up dirt, was transformed by moonlight, resembling the sloping magisterial lawn it was destined to become. I looked behind me at the sky; a scrap of cloud was moving quickly, about to pass in front of the moon. I watched it progress, and when it blanked out the moon, and the world turned temporarily darker, I took a deep breath and crossed the property toward the house, making sure to skirt the half-dug hole where the swimming pool was supposed to go. I took the two wide steps up to the finished patio, crouched again, and removed the backpack from my back and unzipped it. I took out the stun gun and the knife, my pair of leather gloves, and two plastic bags, then rezipped the backpack and stood back up, putting the knife in one front jeans pocket and the stun gun in the other. I pulled the plastic bags on over my hiking shoes, tucking the ends down into my wool socks, then put on my gloves and tested the sliding glass doors that Brad said would be unlocked. They were, and I entered the pitch-black house.
I pulled the doors closed behind me and just stood for a moment, listening intently, and letting my eyes adjust to the blackness. It took a while, but they eventually did, the interior of the house becoming gray and fuzzy. I could make out the finished floors, piled