It Happened on the Lake

by Lisa Jackson

Genres: Domestic Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

In an intense, twisty, Hitchcockian standalone spin on Rear Window from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson, a woman returns to the Oregon town where a nightmare unfolded 20 years ago—and is waiting to engulf her again. For fans of J.T. Ellison, Paula Hawkins, Karin Slaughter, and Riley Sager.

The huge Victorian house on Lake Twilight belongs to Harper Reed Prescott, as does the private island on which it sits. Harper wants little to do with either. Twenty years ago, Harper’s grandmother died suspiciously while in her care, on the same night that Harper’s boyfriend disappeared. His body was never found, and no charges were filed. But the rumors haven’t faded. There have been other deaths, other accidents. All revolving around Harper and her family.

Now Harper’s marriage is over, her college-age daughter is estranged, and Harper just wants to sell the property and make a fresh start. Except returning to the lake has stirred everything up again. Whispers. Memories. And the persistent feeling that, as she gazes out at the houses across the water, she’s being watched in turn.

The whole town has always thought Harper has something to hide, and they’re right. But she might have even more to fear . . .

Release date: June 24, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 592

Sample

The past is unforgiving.

The nagging voice just wouldn’t stop. Harper set her jaw and kept driving, her eyes focused on the narrow, winding road, the illumination from her Volvo’s headlights shimmering against the wet pavement.

You’re not wanted.

She shifted down. The wagon shimmied a little as she took a corner too fast. Water splashed as she tore through a puddle.

You shouldn’t be here.

“Stop!” she said, angry at her self-doubts as the mansion came into view. “Enough already.”

This is a mistake!

Harper ignored the voice in her head that had been nagging her since she’d slid into her Volvo in Northern California about ten hours earlier. Her eyes were gritty, she needed a shower, and she did not need her guilty conscience pricking at her.

Not just a mistake, but a mistake of epic proportions!

“Oh, give me a break. I’m going back, dammit, and I’m going now.”

Sometimes her inner thoughts, riddled with guilt as they were, bugged the crap out of her. Like now. On this dark, dreary Oregon night.

She stepped on the accelerator and her Volvo shot forward, hitting a pothole, the whole wagon shuddering. Harper’s fingers tightened over the wheel.

You’re going to regret this.

“I’m not going to be here long,” Harper argued aloud. “I’m leaving again. Satisfied?”

Of course not.

Her deep-seated doubts were never sated.

“Pull yourself together,” she told herself, but that had been nearly impossible lately with her recent divorce and estrangement from her daughter. And then there was her father’s heart attack. Bruce Reed had survived, she’d heard, but she had yet to see him herself. As soon as she was settled in the cottage, she’d drive to St. Catherine’s Hospital. Not that she and her dad were close these days, but she sure as hell hoped he would recover.

And really, who was she close to at this juncture in her life?

No one.

Not one damned person.

She set her jaw as her headlights reflected on the old deer crossing sign riddled with bullet holes.

Some things never change.

And some things always do, her nagging brain reminded her.

“Shut up!” She cranked up the radio, blasting U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” “Me neither, Bono, me neither.”

From the cat carrier on the seat beside her, Jinx gave out a low, irritated mewl.

“Almost there,” she told the cat, just as she spied the edge of the drive, nearly hidden by untrimmed laurel and overgrown rhododendrons. “You’re fine,” she assured him, then added, “We’re both fine,” though that was a lie.

She eased up on the gas. I’m home, she thought hollowly, an emptiness invading her soul.

How many ghosts from her past lingered on the solitary island, that jagged stump of rock jutting from the dark, impenetrable depths of Lake Twilight?

Her heart squeezed when she caught sight of the caretaker’s cottage at the edge of a parking apron, the place she’d once called home. It had been a spot where she’d lived on and off during her adolescence, a place of solace and heartache.

She let the Volvo roll to a stop near the cottage, just in front of the huge gate leading to the mansion. Beyond the wrought-iron pickets, she saw the bridge that spanned a narrow neck of the lake, connecting the mainland to the island. Her island now. She was thirty-seven, the magical age her grandmother had thought she would be responsible enough to claim her inheritance. Thirty-seven. Was that midlife?

All signs point to “yes.”

“Oh, shut up!”

And as far as crises went, she’d been through her share already.

She cut the engine and climbed out of her wagon. Flipping up the hood of her jacket, Harper stood at the gate, the Volvo’s headlamps casting her shadow through the bars of the massive wrought-iron barrier beyond which the narrow bridge seemed to disappear into the darkness.

The island itself was blurry, a massive, indistinct shape with towering fir trees that rose from the cliffs and sheltered the mansion. No lamps were lit, no exterior lights glowed to highlight the ornate walls or the high turret that knifed into the sky.

“Welcome home,” she told herself.

She’d thought as a child that the house was straight out of The Addams Family.

And she hadn’t been wrong.

But it had been Gram’s home, once upon a time, an architectural showpiece that had turned into a house of horrors.

Harper shivered and pulled her jacket tighter around her.

You can never go back.

Well, here she was.

Very much back.

At least for a little while.

She cast a disparaging glance at the stone posts that were not only fastened to the gate but also served as perches for the gargoyles her grandmother had loved so fervently.

“Tacky, I know, and possibly a tad macabre,” Gram had confided in Harper one summer morning. They had stood just inside the gate, the bridge to their backs as they’d studied the carved beasts in the sunlight.

Harper had been in her teens at the time, and the monstrous winged creatures seemed to her as if they’d risen from hell, just like Sister Evangeline had warned in catechism. The gargoyles’ lips were pulled back into snarls, fangs long and curved, each with a snakelike tail that coiled around its muscular body.

They were not identical. One was sculpted with reptilian eyes and scaled like a dragon. The other’s skin was taut and smooth over visible muscles. Horns curved from its forehead. Huge eyes bulged above a pug nose, and sharp claws extended from manlike hands. The end of its tail was carved into an arrow’s tip. A devil-creature.

To Harper, each sculpture appeared to be the epitome of pure evil.

“You want to scare people away?” she asked, studying the stone creatures warily as she sidled closer to her grandmother.

“No. Not really.” Gram pulled shears from the pocket of her golf skirt and clipped off an errant bit of ivy that had dared wrap around the wrought-iron railing. “I just want people to think about it before they ring the bell. They might even consider me a bit eccentric. Wouldn’t that be delicious?” She’d flipped up the sunglasses she referred to as her Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany’s pair, setting them into her perfectly coiffed hair.

Her blue eyes sparkled as she winked at Harper. “It’s all kind of in fun, you know. But, yes, I do like my privacy. Grandpa, he wasn’t fond of them.” She hitched her chin toward one of the stone carvings. “He called them ‘Ugly and Uglier.’ Thought he was so damned funny.” She sighed and for a second was caught in a nostalgic moment, her eyebrows pinching together. “I guess he would have preferred something more traditional. More regal.”

“Like?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . lions, I suppose.” She swatted at a mosquito, then snipped off another offensive sprig of ivy. She let the sunglasses drop onto the bridge of her nose again. “Come to think of it, he did mention lions, oh, and eagles. Yes, that’s right. Too traditional.” With a quick shake of her head, she added, “As if. Let me tell you, I nixed those ideas quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. My house, my choice, my gargoyles.” She eyed the carved creatures and smiled. “You know, I think they protect me. Keep all of us safe.”

“What about Mama?” Harper asked, feeling the heat from the sun beat against her crown and a coldness enter her heart. “They didn’t keep her safe.”

A shadow crossed Gram’s face. Her amused smile faded. “No, I suppose not.” Gram cleared her throat and scrabbled into her pocket, this time for a pack of cigarettes. She lit up quickly with a silver lighter. As she shot a stream of smoke to the blue, blue sky, she said, “Your mother, she didn’t like them much either.” Her voice had turned soft as she wrapped one arm around her slim waist, holding her cigarette aloft in her other hand as she squinted up at the scaled gargoyle, the dragon, the one Harper’s grandfather had named “Ugly.”

“When she was a little girl, about your age, or a year or two younger, maybe, your mother suggested we should replace them with race horses or unicorns.” Another puff. “Can you imagine? Unicorns?” She said it as if it were a joke, but there was a sadness to her tone, as there always was when she mentioned Mama. Harper felt it, too. That sadness was like a shadow, always close, ready to grow if you thought too long.

“Well, that was Anna for you. Forever the dreamer.” Quickly Gram took another draw on her cigarette, then dropped it onto the pavement and crushed it with her sandaled foot.

Harper had hazarded a glance up at Ugly with its scaly skin and folded wings. If it had been the gargoyles’ job to protect the family, then they had failed miserably. Otherwise Mama would still be alive.

Now, of course, Evan, too, was gone and had been for years. But she wouldn’t think of that tragedy. Nope. There was no time for melancholy on this miserable night.

The Volvo’s headlights offered enough illumination for her to run up the uneven flagstones to the caretaker’s cottage. While rain peppered the ground and dripped off the sagging eaves, she huddled on the porch and fumbled with the key ring—Gram’s set of keys to unlock the door.

Stepping inside, she flipped on the light switch.

Nothing.

The house remained dark, cold, the emanating scent of mold evident. “Not good,” she told herself and backtracked through the rain to the car where she searched in the glove box. All the while Jinx let her know he was still very unhappy. “I know, I know, it won’t be long now,” she said as she found the flashlight, snagged it, and headed back to the cottage.

Once inside again, she swung the weak beam over the interior and saw the soggy mess. Buckled stairs, peeling wallpaper, sodden carpets, and swollen hardwood. The brick floor near the front door was still intact, but everything else inside appeared ruined.

“Well, crap.”

No way could she stay here.

Not until everything was repaired, which would take weeks—no, make that months. So why hadn’t the attorneys in charge of the estate made the repairs? Why had they let the house erode to this abysmal level?

Carefully she stepped into the living room, felt the sponginess of the floor, and retreated to the front hallway again.

There was nothing she could do tonight.

On to Plan B.

Which she had hoped to avoid.

“Grow a pair,” she told herself. For the love of God, she was no longer that desperate, wide-eyed girl who had fled this place half a lifetime ago. She was a grown woman now. A mother and a wife—well, no, an ex-wife, she reminded herself.

The hood of her jacket fell away, and November rain drizzled down her collar as she skirted puddles and made her way to the gate.

Which wouldn’t budge.

The automatic keypad was ruined, the hinges rusted.

“Great.” She shoved again, this time planting her feet, ignoring the pain in her leg and throwing her shoulders into the task. The gate was heavy and had, it seemed, been closed for eons. With an effort, using all the strength she could muster, she forced the damned thing open. Old hinges creaked, but she was able to clear a space wide enough for her car.

Good enough.

“We’re in,” she said to the cat as she settled behind the steering wheel and rammed the gearshift into first. “Even if we really don’t want to be.”

Then she tested the bridge, walking over it and deciding it was still sturdy.

Sending up a prayer as the wipers slapped the rain from the windshield, she drove slowly to the island.

She made it.

The old piers and abutments held.

For now.

She parked in front of the garage and glanced up at the mansion, a huge, three-story monster of a house with a towering turret above it all.

“Home sweet home,” she said with more than a trace of sarcasm. “You’re gonna love it.” She glanced at the passenger side, where the cat carrier was belted tightly into the seat. Two gold eyes peered through the mesh, glaring at her suspiciously. “Trust me, this is gonna be heaven.”

Or hell. Yeah, more likely hell. But she wouldn’t utter those dark thoughts aloud. “Hang here for a sec,” she said, before realizing she was having a conversation with a cat.

A cat!

Not even her cat!

She’d inherited Jinx when her daughter had taken off for college.

“Awesome,” she muttered under her breath. Now she was stuck with the damned thing.

Well, so be it. This was her life now, and bringing Jinx here seemed only right. Cats had always been a part of this place. Gram had taken every stray that had ever wandered onto the island. “It’s a huge house, so why not?” Olivia Dixon had said, upon “adopting” an obviously pregnant calico when Harper was twelve.

She reached into her pocket for the keys, found the one for the front door, and forced it into the lock of the massive double door. With a click, the dead bolt slid out of place, and she pushed the creaking door open.

Everything in the house was as Harper remembered.

Just falling into disrepair.

The split staircase still wound up on either side of the wide foyer to the landing twelve feet overhead. But the banister was now dull, the handrail no longer gleaming. Some of the marble tiles in the floor were cracked. The wallpaper that had intrigued her as a child with its brilliant peacocks and peonies was now faded and peeling near the ceiling where cobwebs collected and draped.

All in all, the foyer was a mess.

And it didn’t bode well for the rest of the house.

Dropping her purse onto a dusty side table, Harper reminded herself that living here didn’t have to be a permanent plan.

As if you’ve ever had a plan in your life.

Face it, Harper, you fly by the seat of your pants.

All the plans you’ve ever made are just reactions to the mistakes you’ve made.

Ignoring the doubts crowding through her mind, she walked quickly through the arched hallway and straight to the back of the house.

Again, she hit a light switch. Several lamps responded to cast a warm glow over the dusty antiques, period pieces, and just plain junk that still filled the room. Gram’s things. Tiffany lamps and a fringed chaise longue straight out of the twenties mixed with club chairs and a sixties era console housing a TV/stereo combination.

How many hours had she spent in front of that thing watching I Love Lucy or Walter Cronkite reporting the news?

Too many to count, she thought as she spied some of the dolls Gram had collected still propped on the furniture and all the religious paraphernalia from her Catholic childhood evident in the bookcases and walls.

The dolls were still strategically placed around the rooms like little pudgy wide-eyed soldiers, guarding the place and now collecting dust. Though Gram had showered her with several Barbies and a Chatty Cathy that repeated recorded phrases like “I love you,” or “I hurt myself” in a wheedling tone, Harper hadn’t been all that interested.

Eyeing the room, it seemed as if time hadn’t lapsed.

Harper half expected her grandmother to roll into the room in her wheelchair, though that was, of course, impossible. And there was no lingering scent of cigarette smoke or whiff of Chanel No. 5 perfume in the air, no rumble of the ancient Kirby vacuum cleaner being pushed over the patterned carpets by the maid. Nor, thankfully, was there a glint of cat eyes watching her or moving as the furry beasts slipped from one hidden alcove to the next. Even the grandfather clock had gone silent with the passing of time. So no, Gram couldn’t appear from her room just off the parlor, the only bedroom on the first level.

Harper gave herself a quick mental shake.

That was then.

This is now.

She walked to the window and pushed aside the tall curtains before raising the shades. Staring across the terrace, she saw the dark waters of Lake Twilight shimmering restlessly. On the far shore the homes of people she’d known, those who had been close to her, those who had not. Friends and enemies, she thought, staring through the rainy night, remembering what might have been if tragedy hadn’t struck.

But it had. And it had struck with a vengeance.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda.” She touched one of her grandfather’s telescopes, this one still mounted in the area between his chair and the window. She thought of all the times she, as a kid, had peered through it, “spying” on the people on the other side of the lake. Just like Gramps with all of his sets of binoculars and the more powerful telescope in his private chambers in the turret where he’d focused on the Leonettis’ bedroom. Harper had caught her grandfather once in that tobacco-scented room when he’d forgotten to lock the door and she’d followed one of Gram’s cats upstairs. She’d peered through the crack between door and jamb to spy Gramps, his hand in his pants. His face was red above the bristles of his beard, and he’d been grunting and breathing hard as he’d stared through the lens.

She’d backed out, not understanding until much later.

Tonight, trying to dismiss the disturbing image, she walked directly to the sideboard near the butler’s pantry, where the liquor had been kept. An array of glassware and several crystal decanters half-full of dark liquid were visible behind the glass doors. Good. Telling herself she deserved a drink after her long drive from California, she reached inside for a glass.

Instead she found a gun.

“What the—?” she whispered, then picked up the revolver with its long barrel and pearl handle. It was heavy. And familiar. The last time she’d held it . . .

“No!” She dropped the damned thing as if it was hot. With a loud crack, a jagged line cut across the glass shelf. She backed away. “No, no, no!” But the memory she’d tried for decades to repress sliced into her brain.

Evan.

Oh dear God.

“Get a grip,” she told herself. She’d been in the house less than ten minutes, and already her nerves were shattered.

This revolver wasn’t the gun that had taken his life. The police had taken that one. This pistol was its twin, part of a set that Gramps had kept locked in his tower room.

So why was it here?

Setting her jaw, she picked up the gun again and examined it. Nearly an antique, the revolver was the kind she had seen in old TV westerns. One side of the mother-of-pearl handle was loose. The screw holding it in place needed tightening with a tiny screwdriver—she remembered that, her grandfather forever trying to fix it.

And Evan had been fascinated by it. She remembered seeing one of the pistols in her brother’s hand as Evan had twirled it and pretended to be Roy Rogers or Wild Bill Hickok or some other TV cowboy she couldn’t name.

She turned the gun over in her hands. Holding the grip, touching the cylinder and trigger, staring at the damned gun with its six deadly chambers, she remembered Evan as he’d been the last time. Eighteen, his blue eyes bright, pupils dilated, brown hair fanned around his face. Always full of “piss and vinegar,” as Gram had said so often. But not then.

Her throat tightened and she refused, absolutely would not think about that hot summer night.

But she was still bothered to have found the pistol and wondered again why it had been left in the cupboard that had housed glassware. And by whom?

Questions flitted through her mind, but she had no answers and wasn’t going to try and force them. “Not tonight,” she told herself and put the damned thing back in the cupboard for now. Later, she would transfer it to Gramps’s locked safe. If she could open the massive thing.

For now, she rooted through another cabinet, found a glass, and blew out any dust that might have collected over the years. She lifted one of the crystal decanters, nudged off the top with her thumbs, and smelled the peaty scent of Scotch.

Her first sip was strong and burned a bit but settled into her stomach. Two more long swallows, and the glass was empty. Soon she would warm from the inside out as the alcohol seeped into the bloodstream.

But first, she needed to unpack the car.

Starting with the cat.

Jinx complained mightily from his carrier as she hauled it, along with a small bag of cat food, to the kitchen. Again, she flipped the light switch. Only a few of the overhead lights winked on, illuminating the kitchen in a weird, almost sepia light. Then she made sure the three doors were closed before opening the cage door. Wide-eyed, all sleek black fur and white toes, Jinx slunk out.

“What’d’ya think?” she said as if the cat could answer. When he didn’t respond, just eyed the new surroundings warily, she said, “I know. Me, too, but trust me, you’re going to fit right in.” She found two ramekins in a cupboard and rinsed them before adding water to one, cat food to another. “Morris loves this stuff, you know,” she told him.

Jinx was unimpressed and didn’t seem to care about the spokes-cat for 9 Lives. Ignoring the dishes, he crept around the perimeter of the large kitchen. “Get comfortable,” she told him as he circumvented the wide island between the stove and refrigerator.

As he explored, she slipped back to the parlor.

“Just one more,” she said as if the cat could hear or understand. She poured herself another healthy shot from the open decanter, drank it in three long swigs.

Jinx was crying at the swinging door.

“I know,” she said, letting the door swing open. “It’s kinda strange being here, isn’t it?” Picking him up, she confided, “It’s weird for me, too.” She left her empty glass on a side table and, stroking the cat, made her way to the window. Her stomach tightened a bit as she looked out across the terrace where she’d last seen her mother so many years before. She’d been just a kid, and her memory was as blurry as that foggy night, some parts completely obscured.

Her fingers tightened.

Jinx yowled!

He kicked hard, scrambling out of Harper’s arm, scratching wildly.

“Ah, wow!” Harper sucked in her breath against the sting but took off after the cat before he could get lost in this huge mansion filled with nooks, crannies, and cupboards. He’d shot down the hallway to the back stairs. “Jinx!” She hit a light switch.

No light sizzled on.

And she saw no cat as she ran past the elevator to the staircase where one flight ascended to the upper floors and the other wound down to the basement.

Both doors were open.

“Jinx,” she called into the darkness. She slapped at a light switch and nothing happened. Crap. “Jinx? Come, kitty.” But her voice seemed to fade into the darkness.

She waited, calling softly. Coaxing.

He didn’t appear.

But he would. He always did.

She tried the light switches for each set of stairs.

Again, the darkness remained.

“Great.” Going down to the basement with its rabbit warren of hallways would be dangerous and fruitless. And searching the upper stories, three counting the tower room, would prove impossible. Her flashlight was weak to begin with, the batteries dying and she had no new ones, so it would be nearly useless.

She would just have to wait until he calmed down and returned.

As he had in the past.

Rubbing her arm, she felt the warm beads of blood that had risen when his claws had caught her wrist and forearm.

“Come on, Jinx,” she said once more and told herself that losing the cat was the perfect end to a miserable day that had started at dawn in Santa Rosa before her drive north. All the way, as the miles had passed beneath her Volvo’s tires, she’d told herself that returning here was no big deal, that all of the pain of the past might surface a bit but would eventually retreat again.

But she’d been wrong.

Dead wrong.

All the old pain was still there, the unanswered questions returning.

She found an ancient box of Kleenex, pulled out all the tissues and took several from the middle of the folded sheets to dab at her arm, then considered another drink but decided against it.

Instead, she gazed through the windows to a spot on the opposite shore. Fox Point, where the lake was narrowest. She remembered each of the houses and their inhabitants: Old Man Sievers’s bungalow near the swim park and closest to town, then the Watkins’ A-frame and the Hunts’ cottage and—

“What the—?” she whispered. Something was out there. Something bright and swirling, seeming to grow more luminous and larger, as it bobbed on the surface and drew nearer.

A fire? There was a fire in the middle of Lake Twilight?

But—?

No.

Couldn’t be.

Heart thudding, she swung her grandfather’s telescope around and peered through.

“Oh God.” Her heart sank.

Sure enough, a boat was ablaze, flames rising into the rain-washed night.

A woman was aboard, her tortured face turned up to the heavens.

Cynthia Hunt.

Chase’s mother.

A woman who blamed Harper for all the heartache in her life.

A woman who wished Harper dead.

“No,” Harper whispered. “No . . . no . . .” There couldn’t be another tragedy on the lake.

Not after there had been so many.

And yet, once more Lake Twilight was claiming its own in its deceptively calm waters.

Fighting a searing sense of déjà vu, Harper ran straight to the bedside phone in Gram’s room, a clunky dial-faced relic that had never been replaced.

Sweeping up the heavy receiver, she sent up a prayer that the line was still connected, that she could still reach someone. A dial tone hummed in her ear.

Thank God!

She jammed a finger into the 9 slot and waited for the dial to slowly rotate back into place. It seemed to take forever for the phone to spin out each digit of the emergency number. “Come on, come on,” Harper said as the phone started to ring. “Answer!”

She stretched the cord and paced.

“9-1-1.” A female voice startled her and started asking questions.

But Harper cut her off. “There’s a boat on fire in the middle of Lake Twilight! Near Dixon Island! There’s at least one person on board! A woman! Send someone now!”

“On Lake Twilight? If you could please identify yourself and—”

She didn’t hear the rest. Just took off through the side kitchen door that was used as a service entrance. Sprinting around the side of the house, she dashed onto the slippery flagstones of the terrace to the stairs.

Slipping and sliding, her pulse pounding in her ears, she scrambled down the steep concrete steps, some crumbling, some slick with moss.

The fire was in full view if anyone was looking, a wavering blaze undulating on the choppy waters, three hundred, maybe four hundred yards from either shore. Surely someone else had noticed the flames. Surely someone had—

Her bad leg gave out.

She missed a step.

Twisting, she went down hard.

Bam!

Her chin bounced on the edge of a step.

Pain exploded through her jaw.

“Oooh. God.” Stunned, Harper slid down the final two steps to the rain-soaked deck. She rolled onto her back. The warm ooze of blood mingled with cold raindrops to run down her chin and neck. She blinked to stay conscious. Thought she might be sick.

No! No! No!

Get up!

She took in a deep breath. Damn it all!

From the corner of her eye she caught a glimmer of orange. The flames. The boat afire. A woman—Cynthia Hunt—trapped on board. A woman who hated Harper’s guts.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, Harper forced herself to her feet, swiped at her chin, and refused to feel the ache in her right leg as she ran across the deck, kicking off her shoes and peeling off her sweater.

Somewhere far off, she heard sirens wailing through the night.

Thank God!

Oh, please, please, hurry!

She sprang, diving deep.

Knifing into the water.

Feeling the lake’s icy embrace.

Swimming faster than she’d ever swum before.

Toward the torch in the middle of the lake.

Toward Cynthia Hunt.

Before it was too late.

If it wasn’t already.

Swim!

Swim, Harper, swim!

Faster!

Where the hell were the other neighbors?

As she swam, she thought she heard the motors of other boats.

Oh God, please . . .

And the cops. Could they hurry and show up?

Stroke!

Stroke, stroke, stroke!

The boat loomed nearer, a funeral pyre.

Aboard, surrounded by flames, Cynthia screamed horribly, her voice rising with the smoke and flames.

Harper thought she might be sick.

Stroke, stroke, stroke!

She knifed through the water. Hard. Fast. Toward the flames.

Closer.

Feeling the heat.

Smelling the smoke.

Watching Cynthia writhe, her face twisted in agony, her arms flailing as she tossed leather-bound albums into the water.

“Jump!” Harper screamed, treading water for a second. “Jump!”

Cynthia’s dress caught fire.

She didn’t notice. Just reached down and flung a thick album into the lake. What the—? “Cynthia, jump! Get out of the boat!” Harper yelled again.

But the woman ignored her and reached through the flames to grab a record jacket and send it skimming across the lake right at Harper.

She ducked. Jesus, was Cynthia aiming at her? The woman seemed blind to anything other than her mission.

Another record album shot across the surface.

Where were the police?

“For the love of God, Cynthia! Get out!” Harper screamed, panicked. “Jump!”

Wild-eyed, Cynthia tossed something glittering, a small statue—no, a trophy like the one Chase had earned in high school—into the water.

What was wrong with her?

Flames licked at Cynthia’s face and caught in her hair, singeing the gray strands.

“Jump!” Harper yelled again, her voice raw. “Cynthia! Get out of the damn boat!” What was wrong with the woman? Treading water less t