They’d been here the whole time, just a few miles away from her. And Nessa had never known. While she’d pottered around her pretty house with its white picket fence, girls almost the same age as her daughters had been stolen from their mothers. Young women had been sacrificed to beasts whose presence she’d never suspected.
“How many are there?” Jo asked.
“More than a dozen,” Nessa told her. “They’re all dead.”
“A dozen? How?” How could so many girls have been killed in a place where cameras were always watching? Then the truth hit Jo all at once. She knew what the men on Culling Pointe did when their families were gone. It wasn’t just a few bad apples. They were all part of it. They had to be. Every last one of them. These men who ran the world could only be satisfied by what they weren’t supposed to have.
“Guys?” Claude was coming toward them, a look of concern on her face. “What’s going on?”
Jo stood up. She didn’t see any reason to lie. They’d need Claude’s help going forward. “There were more girls murdered here than we knew about. Nessa can see them.”
The blood drained from Claude’s face, but she didn’t appear to doubt Jo’s claim. “Murdered? How many?” she asked.
“Nessa says at least twelve,” Jo said.
Claude put her hand to her heart as though trying to keep it from bursting out of her chest. Then she cleared her throat. “Do you know who killed them?”
Jo didn’t want to tell her like this, on the side of the road next to a pile of vomit, but she hadn’t been left any choice. “Claude, I’m so sorry. You were right about Leonard. I should have taken your hunch more seriously,” Jo told her. “That’s why we drove out to the Pointe. We found evidence that implicated him and we’re worried that Harriett might be in danger.”
“Leonard?” Claude repeated the name as though she didn’t quite recognize it, but the accusation didn’t seem to surprise her. “Are you sure he was involved with their deaths?”
Jo glanced over at Nessa, who nodded. “Yes,” she said.
Claude bit her lower lip when it began to tremble. Her eyes lifted away from Jo’s face and focused on a patch of ocean visible between two of the mansions. She stayed silent long enough to make Jo anxious. Then she said, “He fucking lied to me.”
Jo could hear the grief in those four simple words. They sounded heavy and hopeless. They came from a woman who was giving up. A woman who’d bet everything and lost. Who’d tried everything she could think of and failed anyway.
“I’m so sorry.” Jo took a step toward her, but Claude took a step back.
“He said he wouldn’t let me down again,” she said flatly. “He promised. I trusted him.”
“Claude,” Jo started, but her friend turned away.
“Just a sec,” Claude said.
She walked back to the broken-down golf cart and pulled a nine iron out of a bag. Then she left Jo and Nessa and marched off down the street.
“Where are you going?” Jo called.
“To find him,” Claude answered.
Jo held out a hand to Nessa. “I don’t think we want to miss this. Do you think you can get up and walk?”
They made it to Jackson Dunn’s deck overlooking the beach just in time to see Claude reach the dock below, the nine iron resting against her shoulder. Leonard stood at the end of the dock peering out across the waves with his binoculars. He turned at the sound of her footsteps, but he never looked up. He was unaware they were being observed.
“There were more than three,” Claude said. “How many girls died here?”