I flinch—a reaction I can’t prevent because I’m too focused on the heavy glass of the wine bottle still slapping into Tom’s palm.
“We talked a lot while he was in that basement,” he says. “Chatted for hours. There wasn’t much else to do once your detective friend started breathing down my neck. You want to know the most surprising thing he told me?”
He lifts the bottle, brings it down.
Slap.
“That I killed him,” I say.
“Not just that. It was how you did it that was so fascinating.”
Slap.
“A perfect murder,” Tom says. “Far better than what was in that play of yours. That’s where I first got the idea, but you already know that. Poisoning my wife little by little so she dies of something else and I inherit everything.”
Slap.
“But your husband—good old talkative Len—gave me a much better idea. Antihistamine in some wine. Make her good and drowsy. Drop her into the water and let her sink. The police around these parts never seem to suspect foul play when a person drowns. As you well know.”
Slap.
Somewhere below, my phone stops ringing as Katherine gives up.
“She’s probably taking a sip right now.” Tom gestures to the binoculars still clutched in my hands. “Go ahead and watch. I know you enjoy doing that.”
I raise the binoculars, needing both hands to keep them from shaking. The Royce house jitters anyway, as if an earthquake is taking place. Through the shimmying lenses, I see that Katherine has moved to the living room window. She stares outside, the glass of wine back in her hand.
She brings it to her lips and drinks.
“Katherine, no!”
I don’t know if Katherine hears my scream flying across the lake because Tom is upon me in an instant. I swing the binoculars at his head. He blocks them with his arm before slamming the bottle against mine.
I drop the binoculars as pain shoots through my arm.
I cry out, stumble backwards against a rocking chair, and collapse onto the porch.
“Now you know how it feels,” Tom says.
He swings the bottle again. It whooshes past my face, mere inches away.
I scramble backwards along the porch, my right arm throbbing as Tom continues to swing the bottle, slicing the air, bringing it closer.
And closer.
And closer.
“I know how to make you disappear,” Tom says. “Len told me that, too. All it takes is some rope, some rocks, some deep, deep water. You’ll vanish, just like those girls he killed. No one will ever know what happened to you.”
He swings the bottle again, and I scoot out of the way, edging onto the top of the porch steps.
Tom swings again and I duck, trying to keep my balance. A moment of weightlessness follows—cruel in its deception that I might be able to resist the pull of gravity. It ends with a thud onto the next step.
Then I tumble, backflipping down the steps, the edge of each one feeling like a punch.
To my hip.
To my back.
To my face.
When it’s over, I’m flat-backed on the ground, clanging with pain and woozy from the fall. My vision blurs. Tom drifts in and out of focus as he follows me down the steps.
Slowly.
One at a time.
The bottle again smacking into his hand.
Slap.
I try to scream, but nothing comes out. I’m too hurt, too out of breath, too scared. All I can do is try to stand, stumble toward the water, hope someone will see me.
Tom catches up to me at the lake’s edge. I’m sloshing into the water when he snags my shirt, tugs me toward him, swings the bottle.
I lurch to the left, and the bottle crashes down onto my right shoulder.
More screaming pain.
The blow knocks me to my knees. I splash deeper into the lake, the water now at my hips, cold as ice. The chill zaps me with just enough energy so I can twist toward Tom, wrap my arms around his knees, and pull him down with me.
We submerge as one—a seething, writhing mass of tangled arms and kicking legs. The wine bottle slips from Tom’s hand, vanishing into the water just as he drags me out of it. He wraps his hands around my neck and, squeezing, dunks me back under.
I run out of air instantly. The lake is so cold and Tom’s hands are so tight around my neck and I can’t see anything in the dark water. Shoved to the bottom of the lake, I kick and writhe and thrash as my chest gets tighter and tighter. So tight I fear it’s going to explode.
Yet all I can think about is Len.
In this very same lake.
Waiting for me to die in the dark water so he can take over once more.
I can’t let that happen.