Page 100 of Ten Beach Road

She swallowed painfully. She put down her paintbrush and opened the water bottle she’d brought up with her, buying time while she drank.He knows, she thought, while the cool liquid trickled down her throat.He knows Malcolm asked me to meet him on the twenty-fifth and he’s waiting for me to tell him. She set down the water bottle and licked her still-dry lips.

But once she told him, if she told him, the course would be set, and she wouldn’t be the one calling the shots. If she confirmed the time and place, Malcolm would be captured with no possibility of turning himself in. If she did what Giraldi considered the right thing, it would eliminate Malcolm’s chance to do the same. They’d catch him and lock him up. But if he refused to tell them where he’d stashed the money, what would happen then? Could they make him provide access? Could they retrieve the money without his help? She had no idea what the FBI could and couldn’t do or what Joe Giraldi was really capable of.

She, who had dug her way out of poverty by being ruthlessly decisive, dithered yet again while Giraldi watched her in the same way the big brown pelicans watched the schools of bait fish dart through the shallow water.

“If Malcolm turned himself in and gave back whatever’s left of the money he stole, would things go easier on him?” she asked.

“Probably,” he said. “It depends. I apprehend, I don’t prosecute.” He didn’t blink but continued to study her as if he knew all the thoughts racing through her head and even what she felt deep down in her heart. “If you think that’s going to happen or have any information at all about his whereabouts, you need to speak up. Don’t let him put you in the middle.” His dark eyes bored into hers, searching for answers, willing her to confide in him. “You haven’t been ruled out yet as a subject of interest, Nikki,” he said. “You could take a lie detector test to rule yourself out as an accomplice. Or you could simply agree to help us lure him in.”

She looked away then, because she was actually afraid that if she didn’t, she was going to spill everything: What Malcolm wanted her to do and what she wanted from Malcolm. How much she wanted him to redeem himself. Or maybe she wanted Malcolm to redeem her. Maybe she just wanted him to prove that it wasn’t her parenting that allowed him to disengage his conscience at will.

“You need to decide whose side you’re on,” he said. “And soon. Before your friends here find out who you really are and wonder why you haven’t tried to help the authorities find the person who ruined their lives.”

Below there were footsteps on the pool deck. Nicole looked down and saw Deirdre dragging the Frankenstein dummy past the pool and toward the reclinada palm. With Chase’s help, she tied it to one of the three trunks so that it dangled out over the grass near the seawall. Then she walked away, leaving Malcolm’s effigy swinging in the morning breeze.

Maddie fell asleep just before midnight, nodding off with the cell phone still clutched in her hand, her mind only partially numbed by the sunset margaritas she’d consumed. She hadn’t brought up the deadline she’d given Steven and neither had the others, but she’d fallen asleep with the sound of a clock ticking off the minutes in her head.

The text came in at 12:01, though she didn’t see it until the next morning. It read,Please think of yourself as the IRS. I have to file an extension. I love you.It had been sent from Steve’s cell phone. Which could have been located anywhere. Including the family room couch.

---