Chapter 11: The Lake House

We found her on Monday at her dead sister's lake house in Deep Creek, Maryland.

Luciano's men had followed a credit card, and the card had paid for gas forty miles from the Pennsylvania line.

The place was a gray shingled cabin on a quiet cove, with a boat dock.

Someone had left the old dock light burning in daylight.

A silver sedan sat in the gravel drive with the trunk open.

I got out of the SUV before it had finished stopping.

"Mara," Luciano said sharply.

"Stay behind the men."

"No."

"Mara."

I kept walking.

He swore under his breath and came with me, his good hand on a pistol under his coat.

The cabin door was ajar.

I went into the kitchen and there she was, with her back to me, pushing envelopes into a canvas bag.

Lila's laptop lay on the counter next to a bottle of pills and a half-empty glass of wine.

"Marianne," I said.

She whirled.

Her hair was flat, her blouse was creased, and her eyes had the glassy shine of a woman who had been awake for three days.

She saw me and then she saw the man behind me, and she backed against the sink.

"You brought him here," she whispered.

"You brought him to me."

"You answered a dead man's text with Lila's locket around your neck," I said.

"Where is the rest of it?"

"I don't have anything."

"The laptop is right there."

"It's mine."

"It's my sister's," I said.

My voice came out ugly and low.

"She never took it off her desk.

"You went into her apartment and you took it."

"I was entitled.

"I raised that girl."

"You raised her for fourteen years and she called you Marianne," I said.

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