Chapter 44
“Tess made it out. Allie didn’t.”
Detective Washington imagines the poor woman dying alone inside a flooded crawlspace, hundreds of feet from the surface and
locked into a situation not even she could overcome. Despite everything she’d done to survive that day, all her close escapes
and resourceful solutions—the cave didn’t care. Who lives and who dies comes down to simple physics. The positioning of your
legs and arms, the orientation of your torso, your body’s ability to breathe and pump blood. Oxygen, energy, space, time.
There’s nothing fair about it.
She opens her eyes and takes in the empty hospital room. The harsh odors of antiseptic and soap. The buzz of fluorescent lights.
The dry recycled air.
“And,” she says, “we owe it to Allie to get this right.”
For a long moment the lieutenant says nothing.
It’s all there. Washington has taken the puzzle apart and put it back together for him. Each person involved that day has
slotted neatly into their true roles: Jacob, Ethan, Tess, and poor, heroic Allie.
Finally he exhales, a defeated crackle of static. “I think . . . I think you’re right. About Tess. About everything.”
And . . .
He doesn’t want to say it.
And we just let her walk out the fucking door.
Tess DeWater never planned to go home and sleep, of course.
That was just another lie. She’d surely known that police sluggishness had given her a valuable window of time to finish covering her tracks.
She would destroy her bagged clothes before they could be seized.
She would return to Jacob’s mobile residence—its location still unknown—and burn every piece of evidence that might be used to connect them.
It would all be ashes by the morning, every vital thread cut.
Tess has spent hundreds of hours studying criminal procedure as a third-year law student. She surely knows their playbook.
“Christ. I’m sorry, Layla.” She hears a faint creak, an office chair settling as he sits down. “We never should have let her
out of our sight. We had her, we had the mastermind of the whole thing sitting in a room with you—”
“It’s fine.”
“I should’ve trusted you.”
“I said it’s fine.”
The lieutenant stops. An uncertain pause.
“You’re right. You did make a mistake.” Washington allows herself to crack a vindicated smile. “But luckily, I made a mistake,
too.”
She touches her handheld radio.
“Due to my cognitive decline, I forgot to call off the deputies downstairs.”
Within seconds of leaving the hospital’s south lobby, Tess DeWater was identified and arrested by Deputies Harris and Dunn.
She surrendered without incident, and by the time Detective Washington radios in to request an update, they’re already halfway
to the sheriff’s office.
“Baker-twelve. Suspect in custody.”
She lowers her handheld and grins. “Beautiful.”