Chapter Forty-Two
I leave Gilcrest with the phone and crawl through underbrush.
The cabin sits twenty yards away, nestled in trees, across an expanse of granite.
My hand brushes a stone large enough to fit in my palm, and I grab hold of it.
I ease over the rough surface until I press my back to the cabin’s timber walls and slide beneath the open window.
Inside, Freya sits, bound to a chair with silver duct tape, a kerosene lantern burning beside her, her face bruised. Paul paces in front of her.
“Duncan wanted to control you,” he says. “He has, ever since you met him. Hosting true crime? Singing in a local dive? You’re so much better than that.” Paul stops himself. “But I fixed it. And I’ll fix what comes next, too.”
I rise slowly over the sill. What looks like Gilcrest’s gun sits beside the kerosene lamp on a wooden table.
Paul’s back is to me, but Freya’s eyes flick my way.
Paul spins around as I duck and scramble to the back of the house.
Footsteps pound across the cabin floor, and light from the kerosene lamp spills into the night.
“Duncan?” Paul calls. “Did you come for more? I’ll shoot you again if that’s what it takes. ”
He moves toward the corner of the cabin, the light traveling with him, the gun in hand, his shadow extending across the stony plateau. I keep to the dark, retreating as he pursues.
“Come out, come out,” Paul says. “Be a man.”
I stop at the next corner, the stone clenched in my palm. I’ll get one chance, and one chance only. Will Paul hesitate long enough when he sees that it’s me? Will he care?
He stops and turns, retracing his steps into the cabin. “What did you see?” he asks Freya.
Tape rips from her mouth, and it takes a moment before she answers. I imagine her testing her jaw and stalling for whatever time she can.
“Water,” she says, her voice raspy.
“Who’s here?”
“Put the gun down,” Freya says. “Then water. More than a sip. After that, maybe I’ll talk.”
A few seconds later, I hear her gulping. Finally, she says, “Where’s Duncan?”
“Dead. I shot him with his own gun.”
Freya gasps. “Oh, Paul. Why?” she says.
“For you,” Paul shouts. “He was stringing you along. Couldn’t you see that? He had you trapped here.”
I take my place beneath the window and peer over the frame. Freya’s eyes are red and swollen, but this time she doesn’t make the mistake of looking my way.
“This is for the best,” Paul says, his voice soft. He holds a tissue to Freya’s nose. “There you go. That must feel better. But Duncan’s not worth these tears.”
Freya closes her eyes. “You’re right,” she says.
In an instant, Paul has the gun in hand and thrusts it at Freya’s temple.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t manipulate me.
It’s like earlier, when you told me you’d go back to New York.
You promised. But I could tell after the others left that you were backtracking and finding an excuse to stay.
You belong in New York. We belong in New York, without Duncan Gilcrest. And I’ll keep watching out for you, no matter what it takes.
I’ve watched out for you since the first time I saw you, since the first time I slipped into the cabin at Burkehaven while you slept. ”
The corners of Freya’s mouth twitch up in recognition of a long-standing mystery finally solved, I imagine, though the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
Paul presses the gun to her forehead and releases the safety.
Freya winces. “No, no,” she says. “I’m not laughing.
I’m not. And come on, Paul, put that thing down.
You could pull the trigger by accident. Then where would you be? ”
Paul keeps the gun in place, the muscles along his arm taut.
“I’m impressed,” Freya says. “That’s all.
Because I should have followed the evidence like Gina would have.
You were the one who stole my necklace when I stayed at Burkehaven, not Isaac Haviland.
You were the one who would sneak into my room in the cabin.
All this time, all these years, your goal was to narrow my world, to get me to retreat and depend on you.
I stopped working. I stopped seeing friends.
There I was in the busiest city in the world, hiding out in my co-op, and the only person I saw regularly was my manager.
You. And that was what you wanted. But I took a chance on a stupid true-crime show, one I was so embarrassed by that I kept it from you.
I auditioned, and I got the role, but even though the show didn’t get picked up, I met Duncan, and I told you I wanted to give New Hampshire a chance.
I told you it might be time to turn a new page. ”
Paul lowers the gun. “You said it would be like the old days,” he says, his voice breaking, “but it wouldn’t have been. I’d have been alone again.”
My heart almost goes out to him, and maybe it would if I weren’t on a mountaintop facing down a gun-wielding maniac who’s lied to me my whole life. Somehow, at some point, Paul convinced himself that Freya was the key to being loved, but he couldn’t get what he wanted without controlling her.
“The stalking wasn’t about scaring me from New York,” Freya says. “It was about keeping me there, where you could have me to yourself. You were the one who kept saying Duncan wasn’t prioritizing me, that he loved Nicole.”
“He’d never have left her,” Paul says.
“But he did leave Nicole. He just didn’t hate her, which is what he kept trying to tell me. He loves his kids, and so does she, so they prioritize their family, and they make it work.”
“He loved his kids,” Paul says. “He doesn’t love anyone anymore. Not even you.”
“And I should have listened to him,” Freya says, her voice growing cold. “Instead, I listened to my old friend. Then that old friend burned down my house. No house. No boyfriend. No reason to stay in Hero. You and I, we could go back to the way things were, and you wouldn’t be by yourself.”
“They were good the way they were,” Paul says. “They still can be.”
Out in the night, Ginger howls.
Paul moves toward the cabin door. “I should have shot that damn dog when I had a chance,” he says.
“Leave her, Paul,” Freya says, quickly. “She’s tied up and can’t get to you, and I heard sirens. The police must be at the farmhouse by now. Paul, Duncan would have called for backup.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“Tell me, Paul, what am I doing?”
“You’re playing Gina Shock. You’re mirroring my words. You’re saying my name and trying to connect to me. But you don’t need to do that. We’ve been connected for as long as we’ve known each other, since the first time I saw you sing at Burkehaven.”
“I could sing for you now,” Freya says. “What would you want to hear?”
Paul shakes his head. “Stop. You don’t care about any of this. And you can play Gina as much as you want, but I know who you are. I know you’re scared out of your mind.”
“I am scared. I’m terrified.”
“That’s better,” Paul says. “Why? Tell me.”
“Because I care about you. You’ve been a friend when I’ve needed one. And now, I don’t know how we’ll get out of this without someone else getting hurt.”
“I don’t know if we are getting out of this,” Paul says, retrieving a knife from the table and cutting Freya’s legs free from the chair.
I duck beneath the window. Paul has no intention of leaving this mountaintop, I imagine, and he won’t let Freya leave, either. I don’t have time to wait for Seton to ride to the rescue. Somehow, Freya and I need to get out of this on our own.
“Move,” Paul says. “And don’t try anything.”
Light from the lamp spills into the night as they make their way across the cabin. Freya glances toward me as she steps outside, her pale face betraying her fear.
I weigh the stone in my hand.
“Keep going,” Paul says. “To the overlook.”
“We can make it to my truck and leave,” Freya says. “People think I’m on my way to New York.”
“It’s too late for that,” Paul says, shoving her from behind.
Freya stumbles and rolls onto the ground. Paul reaches to yank her to her feet, and she pivots onto her hip, jabbing her foot into his groin.
“Now!” she shouts.
I charge and swing. Paul dodges, releasing the lantern so it smashes and a burst of kerosene lights up the night. He grips Freya’s hair in a fist and presses the gun to her temple.
“I’ll blow her brains out,” he says, backing toward the cliff.
I stop, frozen in place, unable to reconcile the person I grew up with, the person who came to my parents’ weekends at boarding school, with this person in front of me.
Could any part of that relationship have been true, or is this person, this angry man, one of the reasons I grew up feeling so alone?
Freya meets my eyes. “We’ll never be what you want, Paul,” she says.
“Don’t look at Charlie,” he says. “After tonight, you and I will be together. Charlie won’t be there. Duncan won’t, either. It’ll be you and me alone, the way it should have been.”
“It won’t, though. And it never was.” Freya pauses, her gaze locked on mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I do understand. Paul needs control. It’s the only way he feels connected. Now we have to make him feel alone all over again. We have to make him lose control.
I mirror his steps. “Ginger tried to rip my throat out,” I say to Freya, and only her.
“That’s my girl,” Freya says, “but you should trust her. She likes you, more than she lets on. And she’ll listen to you if you ask in the right way and show her who’s boss.”
“She was thirsty, but Gilcrest brought her some water,” I say. “He’s down the trail, hurt badly but not dead. And Seton’s coming. With an army behind her.”
“He’s lying,” Paul says.
I ignore him. “Gilcrest told me to tell you he loves you. And he’s sorry.”
Freya closes her eyes and whispers a silent prayer. “Thank you,” she mouths.
Paul reaches the edge of the cliff. “You should have left well enough alone, Charlie. Why did you have to keep asking about Isaac? What did it matter after all this time?”
I’ve already established that if Paul killed Isaac, my mother would have been lying for him all these years, and why would she have chosen Paul over my father?
But maybe I missed something. Maybe Paul really did kill Isaac, and my mother’s concerns about Reid, the ones Hadley told me about, were unfounded, after all.
The only connection I’ve found between Isaac and Paul is the money Paul lent out.
“Isaac came to New York with a plan to rehab the Landing,” I say. “He wanted you to invest.”
“I refused,” Paul says.
“But he left with fifty grand,” I say.
“He knew too much,” Paul says. “He knew about Freya, about the things I’d done. He figured out the things I was still doing.”
“The night Isaac came to the West Village,” Freya says, “I told him about being stalked. He must have known it was you.”
“Isaac found your necklace when we were kids, the one I stole,” Paul says. “He promised me it was our secret. He understood how much you meant to me. And what I’d do to keep you close.”
The money Mrs. Haviland found in the ledger suddenly makes sense. “Isaac figured out you were stalking Freya and blackmailed you,” I say. “That’s why you gave him the money. And that’s why you killed him and let my father take the fall.”
Paul glances over the edge of the cliff, into the abyss. “I didn’t kill Isaac,” he says. “Reid did. Reid did what I told him to, right until the end.”