He’d be so proud of her!

She had tested telling him, just bringing up the idea of sending Cate another recording. But he’d been firmly against it. Wait it out, he’d said again, and had looked so tired and sad.

Once she’d done what needed to be done, once they locked Dupont in a cell, where she belonged, she’d tell him everything.

And she’d double her efforts for that early release. She’d demand one.

She knew the Sullivan estate well enough. How foolish of the rich and famous to allow photographers into their homes, or stories to be written about them.

And she could study aerial views on the internet to her heart’s content.

She knew enough to understand the security—gates, cameras—the positioning of the guest cottage, and its famed wall of glass facing the sea.

Despite the cameras, she’d considered getting a boat, trying to get to the peninsula under the cover of night.

But she didn’t know how to handle a boat, and she’d certainly set off alarms.

She didn’t have enough time to learn how to bypass alarms like they did in the movies.

She considered killing one of the staff, and going in their place. But the cameras would spot her, and she didn’t have the code for the gate security.

She could force one of the staff to take her through. But the cameras would see two people. Unless she hid in the back seat, with her gun pressed to the back of the seat.

But then what would she do with the driver? Couldn’t kill him or her right there, couldn’t let the person go.

Then, after reading an article in the Monterey County Weekly highlighting staff of prominent residents of Big Sur, she saw the way. One Lynn Arlow—part-time maid at Sullivan’s Rest—had several quotes in the airy, soft news piece. Buried in the fluffy, Jessica found a few key pieces of information.

To help put herself through college (online courses), Arlow worked three and a half days a week at the estate. The article helpfully added Arlow rented a house with three other women in Monterey.

A little more research, and Jessica had Arlow’s address. Risky, of course, it would be risky, but Grant was worth any risk.

She practiced, researched, studied, timed, traveled for on-site surveillance. She ran through every aspect she could think of, then ran through it again. As the first hints of fall freshened the air, she drove from San Francisco to Monterey, timing her arrival to the early hours of the morning.

She parked in a public lot and in the dark, walked the seven blocks to the little house Lynn Arlow shared with her sister, a cousin, and a friend.

Picking the trunk lock on the old Volvo posed no real challenge, since she’d practiced religiously. Armed with a penlight and a .32 Smith & Wesson, she climbed into the trunk.

To hold off quick panic, she concentrated on the glow of the internal trunk release. Before researching she hadn’t known that safety feature existed—standard for nearly two decades.

For comfort, she put her hand on it, but resisted the urge to yank it. She couldn’t smother, she reminded herself. Plenty of air. She had that glow, and her penlight.

True, she didn’t like small, dark places, but she could stand it. She would stand it thinking about all the years Grant had survived in prison because of Charlotte Dupont.

Closing her eyes, she concentrated on slowing down her rapid breathing. She imagined walking on a beach in Hawaii with Grant, imagined him taking her into his arms under the moonlight with palm trees swaying. Imagined them making love, at last, for the first time.

With a smile on her face, she drifted off.

She woke with a jolt when the car bumped over a pothole. Panicking in the dark, she forgot where she was, what she meant to do, and for one horrible moment thought herself trapped in some sort of moving coffin.

When she remembered, her shaking hand dug for her penlight. In that little beam, she gasped for air, and calm. All at once, it fell over her, the insanity of what she meant to do. The average, ordinary rule follower she’d been reared up inside her and wanted to scream.

She had to get out, get out and run, go back to her quiet, solitary life.

The idea of being alone again, being nothing again, having no one again, stopped her as she started to yank the release.

She could never go back now, never go back to the quiet and solitary. She’d already killed, and knew how it felt—thrilling—to take a life. For love, but for justice, too. And still Charlotte Dupont, the true villain, hadn’t paid the price.

She had to see it through. No matter how frightening it all seemed now, she would see it through. Closing her eyes, she thought of Grant.

The image of the love, the pride, the gratitude she’d see on his face when she told him steadied and strengthened her.

She was someone to write books about now, she reminded herself. And it was time for the next chapter.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Inside the trunk, Jessica switched off the light as she felt the car turn, stop at the first gate, then start to climb. She breathed carefully as it slowed, again, and saw the second gate in her mind.

Nine o’clock. She’d chosen Lynn Arlow’s half day purposefully. It gave her four hours to make her way to the cottage, to kill Caitlyn Sullivan, to set the stage. Then she’d make her way back to the car, slip inside the trunk.

By the time anyone found the body, she’d be back in Monterey. Maybe even on her way back to San Francisco. On her way back to Grant.

Plenty of time. More than enough time.

When she finally felt the car stop, when she heard the engine cut off, the driver’s door slam, she waited.

One full minute, then one more.

Now, she told herself. Do it now.

She gripped the interior release, pulled. Relief sweat drenched her face when she heard the soft pop of the trunk. Slowly, carefully, she eased the lid of the trunk up an inch. She heard the sounds—lawn mower? Weed whacker? The groundskeepers.

She just had to avoid them.

She eased the trunk up another inch, saw the back of a building. A garage, she decided after several sweaty minutes. She strained her ears for the sound of voices or footsteps, but heard nothing other than the distant sound of someone cutting grass.

Holding her breath, she scrambled out of the trunk, carefully eased the lid down before she crouched beside the car.

Between Arlow’s car and another. Staff parking, she realized. And there was the groundskeepers’ truck. There was the garage, the big tree.

Of course, of course, the staff parked in the back.

Staying low, she crossed a stretch of lawn not yet mown. She’d practiced moving fast and low in her apartment, but there were so many windows in the house, so much glass.

Her heart thudded as she dashed to a tree, green and leafy with summer, to shrubs wildly blooming. She’d studied every photo of the house she’d found on the internet. An architectural feat, they called it, with all its levels and layers, its famed bridge, its commanding views.

But it looked so much bigger in real life, sprawled in so many directions, and with all those sheer glass eyes. She didn’t dare cross any of the patios or terraces.

It occurred to her she should’ve dressed like staff instead of in cat burglar black.

Work pants, a T-shirt, a cap so she’d look like one of the groundskeepers if anyone glanced outside.

Spotting the worker on the lawn mower, another with an edger, she dropped, heart thumping, thumping, onto a bricked path behind a rise of lilies. Overhead she heard a door open. Someone came out singing.