FRANTICALLY, I CHECKED CALLER ID—Unknown Number—and the phone directory, but found no listing under Sydney’s name. Son-of-a-bitch! I jumped in the car and sped to her studio hoping to find some kind of emergency number listed on the front door, but there was nothing. Back at home I lay awake the rest of the night waiting for the phone to ring again. It didn’t.I fixed a pot of coffee and sat at the breakfast table watching the sun come up wondering if Sydney might be watching it as well, wondering what kind of night she’d had.I took a shower, dressed, remembered the shattered cassette Martha wanted, dug it out of the trash, and gave it to her when I picked her up. We arrived back at the hospital just before 8 a.m., and I noticed Winston sitting in the waiting room on Dad’s floor. His hat was tipped down over his face covering his scars. I supposed he was there to support Mom.“You think he’s bein

I RODE TO MOM’S and found Martha sitting in her wheelchair at the desk in the corner of her room. She was hunkered over a sheet of newspaper with all the parts to the cassette laid out on it.“Hey, hey! How’s it going?” I asked spreading myself across her doorframe.She raised her hand. “Shhh. Mom’s upstairs asleep.”“Oh, sorry.”“What are you so excited about?”“I just had lunch with Sydney Deagan.”“A date?”“Sort of.” I browsed the bookcase in the hall, removed the oldest photo album, and carried it into Martha’s room where I sat on her bed.“Tell me everything,” she said without looking up.I opened the dark leather cover on the album. It crinkled as it folded back. “Not much to tell. I picked up a couple of wraps and met her at the gazebo on the back of Greenfield Lake.”“M

I COULD SEE THE BEACH HOUSE from a half mile away, a crystal castle rising out of the darkness. I cut through to the beach where I rode the bike along that strip of firm sand at the edge of the water, then killed the engine, and hid it in the dunes within fifty yards of the house. If I needed to get away quickly, I’d have a better chance on the beach than on the highway. I opened the saddlebag, retrieved a pair of binoculars, and settled down in the dunes to watch the place.No one was outside. I panned the binoculars window to window, switched my cell phone off, and moved along the dunes toward the back of the house. From there, I could see into the lighted rooms on the first and second floors, but curtains were drawn across a brightly-lit chamber on the third floor. Three women were curled in chairs in the screening room watching a movie on the giant TV screen.I made a wide arc around to the house across the street from where I could see up under the beach hou

SYDNEY DROVE SLOWLY up the beach highway as she and Martha scrutinized the houses along the oceanfront looking for Richard’s bike. Cars backed up behind them and gunned around them when opportunities arose.“It’s got to be somewhere along here,” Martha whispered. “It’s not much farther to the end of the road.”An impatient driver pulled out to pass just as a pair of headlights up the road turned onto the highway facing them. But instead of pulling back in behind her, the car sped up in an effort to get around her and abruptly veered to the right cutting them off. Jerking the wheel to the right, Sydney locked the brakes, her van skidding off the highway bouncing to a stop in deep sand as the two opposing cars continued on, as though nothing had happened.Sydney whispered, “You okay?”Pulling on the handle above her door, Martha winced. “I think so.”Restarting the engine, Sydney tried

DANE BONNER TURNED OFF Highway 133 west of Wilmington near Kendall Chapel and guided his Escalade through thick brush along an overgrown dirt trail leading back to a nineteenth-century farm house. He’d stolen the property from a client that had gotten the death penalty for the rape, torture, and murder of an eleven-year-old boy the man had picked up hitch-hiking. Although it was located in Brunswick County, it was just minutes from Wilmington along the western side of the lower Cape Fear River—a tract he now called “The Bonner Place.”The two-story frame house had been built in the late 1800s and had been wired for electricity later with exposed cables running up and down the outside of the house. The barns and sheds had been added in the more affluent 1950s. Behind the barn, there was a bulkhead and dock on the river. He got out of his car, pulled open the front doors to the barn, and parked the car inside.Bonner lit a kerosene lantern, unbolt