Page 49 of Final Cost

Now he’s got my interest. “Did you find anything?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you.”

He heads to the study without another word, clicking on the lights and then the TV. Then he pulls out his phone and hits a few buttons. Black-and-white night vision footage of the back gate at Ackerley pops up on the screen.

“This is from the night of the fire,” he says.

“Yeah. I see the time stamp.”

We watch. Nothing happens for a minute or two. But then two cars come into view, headlights blazing. One is Ravenna’s Jaguar. The other is a dark sedan with a spoiler on the back. A Camry or an Accord. The gate swings open. Then the Jaguar zooms in and parks behind a large tree while the gate swings shut again. Ravenna gets out of the Jaguar.

Daniel gets out of the sedan.

“Oh, my God.Daniel?” I cry.

“Daniel,” he says with grim finality.

I watched, stunned, as Daniel hurries over to Ravenna and swoops in for a hug that lifts her to her tippy toes. It does not look like the standard greeting of a member of staff for his former employer. Let’s just say that. Ravenna pulls back and lightly smacks his upper arms to get him to drop her. Her back is to us, and there’s no sound anyway, but whatever she says to him makes Daniel’s shoulders slump. Then she says something else and starts to walk off. He catches her arm and swings her back around before she can get very far. Whereupon she puts her hands on her hips, hikes up her chin and lets him have it for several seconds. He says something harsh back. A standoff ensues. Then she seems to reconsider her position, whatever it is, and she sidles closer. She tips up her chin again, but this time, there’s something coquettish about it, with a hair toss and silent body language that’s overtly sexual now. Daniel reaches for her again and she allows him to kiss her. There’s something desperate about him as he puts his hands on her head and pulls her closer. Something pathetic. Especially once I notice the way she strains away the whole time. Not at all the enthusiastic reception she gave Winwood whentheykissed. Then she breaks the kiss and runs off toward the cottage with him staring longingly after her. That seems to be the end of the video.

“All that was missing from the original footage,” Winwood says. “I was able to recover it.”

I shake my head and start to say something about how I can’t believe that Daniel was involved with Ravenna, but my attention snags on Daniel’s car. I frown at its frozen image on the screen. “Wait. I’ve seen that car before somewhere,” I say, more to myself than to Winwood.

“You have? You’ve probably seen it on the grounds here somewhere.”

“No. I’ve never seen him in a car. Or where the staff park,” I say faintly, straining hard to remember where Ihaveseen that car with the spoiler. And then I do. “Wait.” I glance around for Lucien’s tablet and luckily find it right on his desk. In another stroke of luck, he let me use it one night in his cabin on the cruise when I couldn’t sleep, which means I know the password. I punch it in and quickly find what I’m looking for.

“What is it?” Winwood says, coming to stand over my shoulder.

“It’s the security footage from the gas station near the beach on the night Ravenna died,” I say. “The police think it shows Lucien on his way to the beach to kill her. Lucien showed it to me the other day. Wait. Here he comes.”

We watch and wait as a Range Rover zooms into and out of view. And then… Did I imagine it all? No. Another car comes into view and there it is: a dark sedan with a sporty spoiler, also heading in the direction of the beach.

Daniel’scar, I now realize.

“Nice work, Nancy Drew,” Winwood says, brows up.

“Wait,” I say as another memory shakes itself loose from the back of my brain and demands that I pay attention to it. “There’s more. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

With that, I dash out and hurry upstairs to Ravenna’s room, praying the whole way that Maddie didn’t finish with her project and sell all of Ravenna’s clothes already. But no. There are still plenty of items on the racks. I hurry to the red tweed dress from a charity thing here at Ackerley and look at its corresponding Polaroid to make sure I’m remembering correctly.

And there it is. A picture from three years ago, well before Ravenna’s “death.” Ravenna posing and pouting at the camera and Daniel on her left, staring at her with the kind of frustrated naked heat that I’m astonished I didn’t notice before. I grab it and hurry back downstairs, determined not to let anything happen to this valuable piece of evidence. Because here in my hot little hand, I have proof that Daniel has long-standing feelings for Ravenna.

The kind of feelings that might drive a man to help a woman fake her own death.

“I found it,” I call, waving it around as I walk back into the study. “It’s a picture of Daniel looking at Ravenna like he wants to fuck her brains out. From three years ago —oh, my God.”

I stop cold, the rest of the sentence drying up in my throat. Because the man I’m talking to in the center of the room isn’t Winwood.

It’s Daniel.

But this is an altered Daniel. One with no hint of the warmth I’ve always received from him. And when he stretches his lips in a bastardization of a smile that doesn’t come anywhere near his flat eyes, it’s a chilling sight. One that makes me realize I’m in real trouble. Not at all like the trouble I thought I was in a few minutes ago when Winwood surprised me.

“What an interesting theory, Tamsyn,” he says softly, malice in every syllable.

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