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  Then Cecily vanished.

  What had happened after that? Molly’s memory was a blank wall with no foot- or handholds. She trembled so violently, she could barely make her limbs work. Her legs staggered and stumbled their way across the floor to Eloise’s camelback trunk of hidden wonders. Her hands skittered the key around the keyhole for several frustrating seconds before the barrel slid home. A quick twist, and the lock disengaged.

  Her phone rang, Cary’s ringtone blaring in the room as though amplified. Flinching, she dropped it. The phone landed inside the trunk, the back cover and battery spilling out across a thick manila file folder. She swept it aside, snatched up the folder, fumbled open the front flap. Stared in horrified disbelief.

  Her legs folded under her. She thudded hard on the floor. Newspaper clippings scattered. Headlines screamed at her from the battered oak boards.

  Normandy Park woman reported missing

  Authorities still searching for Molly McKinley

  McKinley’s car found near Seventy-Six Gulch

  Missing Normandy Park woman found alive in Seventy-Six Gulch

  Loggers find missing Normandy Park woman

  McKinley’s brother person of interest in abduction

  UW professor questioned in disappearance of wife, McKinley abduction

  Her fingers scrabbled at the edges of one, managed to scratch it off the floor. The date November 11 of last year was scrawled in the top corner in her mother’s spidery handwriting.

  McKinley abduction linked to missing Medina woman

  The Associated Press

  Seattle, WA—The disappearance of Cecily Welch, wife of University of Washington professor Cary Welch, has been linked to the abduction of a Normandy Park woman, authorities say.

  Welch, the daughter of Maple Valley police detective Harvey Cohen, disappeared three months before the kidnapping of Molly McKinley, 30, of Normandy Park. Welch’s husband and McKinley’s brother have been implicated in the disappearance of both women.

  “I don’t believe my son-in-law had anything to do with Cecily’s vanishing,” Detective Harvey Cohen said Thursday regarding the allegations of Welch’s involvement in his daughter’s disappearance. He also expressed his belief in Cary Welch’s innocence in the kidnapping and torture of Molly McKinley in October.

  McKinley was found by a logging crew on a remote road near Seventy-Six Gulch, near death from numerous stab wounds, three days after she was reported missing by her parents, Kenneth and Eloise McKinley of Normandy Park. Cary Welch had maintained a romantic relationship with McKinley since his separation from his wife in July. McKinley’s twin brother, Magnus, has also been named a person of interest in both cases.

  Both men deny any involvement in either case.

  She scrambled for the pieces of her phone, slammed the battery home, pressed on the back cover so hard she cracked it. The phone took an eternity to boot up, ringing immediately. Magnus this time. She swiped to refuse the call, tapped into her call log, and redialed Harvey Cohen’s number. He answered halfway through the first ring.

  “I have the case file. It’s the only one I can call up in the system from the missing year. Molly—”

  “Harvey, it was me. That last book was me.” The sobs burst from her, harsh and ugly in the dusty, cluttered room. “How could they? How could they?”

  “There was never any conclusive proof that either one of them had anything to do with what happened to you. Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ve already left the station, and I’m on my way to your house. Don’t let either of them in the house.”

  “I have to read the last book—it’s in my bedroom. They’re in there: all the memories of the world, trapped by magic.”

  “Stay in the attic!” he shouted. “I’m on my way. Just stay locked in the attic until I get there. Please, Molly. I’m almost there!”

  She disconnected. Dropped the phone on top of the newspaper clippings. Stumbled through the attic door with no recollection of dragging herself up from the floor. She lost her footing and skidded down several steps before catching the railing and finding her balance.

  The hallway to her bedroom was a million miles long, a funhouse of undulating floors and pulsing walls. Molly careened off one wall and into the other, lurching against a door. She grabbed the knob and pitched into Magnus’s bedroom.

  He exploded out of the chaos that was his room, wading through piles of clothes and kicking empty, upturned boxes out of his way, his hand reaching for her throat. Molly flailed backward, but still he came, charging toward her. Her back hit the wall opposite his door, and then he was upon her. One hand planted against her chest, slamming her into the wall; the other scraped at her throat and came away dangling the infinity-knot necklace, the broken ends of the chain leaking golden links onto the floor.

  “Where did you get this?” His voice thundered in the hallway. She was vaguely aware of exclamations of alarm from the lower floor, the scrape of chairs on the kitchen floor, thudding footsteps pounding on the stairs. “This was hers! Where the fuck did you get it?”

  “Cary!” she gasped, and started crying. Cary had fastened it around her neck weeks ago, a gift that had accompanied a red lace camisole he’d insisted she wear and then had torn open from neckline to navel after he’d tumbled her onto his bed. “Cary gave it to me! Please, Magnus, let me go! You can have it. It’s what you were looking for, isn’t it?”

  He took a step back, breathing heavily, his hand falling away from her chest. “No. I’m looking for some notebooks. I’m sorry, Molly.”

  Molly collapsed, curling into a ball on the hallway carpet, sobbing. Kenneth McKinley hit Magnus from the side, tackling him to the floor, shouting at Eloise to get Molly and lock themselves in her room.

  The vision vanished. Molly found herself prone on the floor, dragging herself to her room against the pitch and yaw of the hallway. She pulled herself up from the floor, using her bedroom doorknob for leverage, flinging it closed behind her.

  The police had been to see Magnus again. She had listened from the upstairs hallway.

  “Your prints are all over her house,” they said.

  “Of course they are; we’ve been dating for several months,” he said.

  Back and forth it went, as they presented her brother with all the evidence that seemed to damn him.

  “You stalked her.”

  “I watched over her, only because she said in group that she thought her husband was stalking her.”

  “You left her gifts.”

  “I left her things that she could easily identify as coming from me.”

  “You have to admit that’s weird, Mr. McKinley.”

  “I prefer romantic. And I don’t have to admit anything.”

  “You can’t account for your whereabouts when she disappeared.”

  “No one knows when she disappeared. I’ve given you my timeline between the last time I saw her and the point where we all realized she was missing. What more do you want?”

  “There are gaps where you indicate you don’t remember where you were or what you were doing.”

  “Do you remember where you were or what you were doing every second of every day?”

  “This would be much easier if you would cooperate.”

  “I am cooperating. How about you do your part by finding her instead of harassing me?”

  Molly retreated into her room, slightly chagrined by his hostility because she was partly responsible. She’d asked him about the necklace earlier, wondering how he was certain it was Cecily’s. It could just be a coincidence that Magnus and Cary had both given their girlfriends the same type of necklace.

  A short while later, a shattering crack split the air. The door splintered and burst open. Magnus stormed in, the necklace wrapped around his fingers.

  “Here!” He flung it into her face. “Take it. You won’t stop whining about it, so have it!”

  “I don’t want it, not if it was hers.”

  He glared at her, loathing etched in
every line of his face. “You’ve done nothing but ruin my life since I was born. I hate you!” He hurtled into the hall, slamming her ruined door behind him.

  Moments later, Eloise glided in, her face twisted with anguish. She knelt on the floor beside Molly, reaching for her sobbing daughter, silent tears streaming down her face.

  “The police have been here again. He’s understandably upset.” Her hand smoothed over Molly’s hair. “Our family is falling apart, Molly. Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand what Cecily told you?”

  Her mother doubted her, wanted to believe in Magnus. All the years of Eloise coddling him and excusing him and Molly taking second seat to him and his mental issues lodged in her chest, an emotional burden that made her draw away and dry her tears on her sleeve.

  “I didn’t misunderstand,” she replied dully. “Please go. I’d like to be alone.”

  Eloise had left, trying to latch the broken door behind her. A moment later, Molly heard her mother knock on Magnus’s door, and then the click of the latch as she closed it after her.

  She reeled across the bedroom, the vertigo of shock crashing her into the doorframe of her closet. Reality spun away again, and time became a fluid ocean where minutes were hours and hours were eons. Recollections poured into it like a violent source river, too swift for her to cling to any but for the briefest second.

  Away from her house, Molly contended with Cary’s increasing rage against her brother. How dare he lie to the police? He knew exactly where Cecily was. Either she was hiding and causing a stir for attention, or Magnus had done something to her. Why wouldn’t he just admit it and let this all be done and settled? Cecily could be brought home, dead or alive, and her family could be at peace.

  But Molly couldn’t shake the memory of Cecily’s words: Will you look even if it means you find that Cary is responsible? And she couldn’t shake the fact that, around the suspected time of Cecily’s disappearance, she had been unable to reach him. She had to find a way to track where he was going. She didn’t think she could put an app on his phone—he never let it out of his possession, and he was sure to notice a new app he didn’t download himself. But there must be a way she could do it undetected.

  “Can I put all this in your trunk? Clutter makes me crazy.”

  Cary obligingly opened his trunk. Molly dropped in her tote bag, winter coat, and shopping bags. While he unlocked the doors and came around to her side of the car to open her door, out of sight of the trunk, she tossed the small GPS tracking device as far back as she could before closing the lid. She had put a similar one in Magnus’s trunk, waiting until he fell asleep one night to snatch his keys from the key organizer in the kitchen and sneak into the garage.

  Heart pounding, certain he could read her deception, she climbed into her seat. He closed the door, got in, and looked around the parking lot bleakly, taking in the Christmas decorations adorning the poles.

  “I think I hate Christmas now.”

  The police had been by to see him yet again—both him and Magnus. Each was wearing ragged to the point Molly couldn’t be certain which of them she suspected.

  Molly stared at the tracking app on her phone in disbelief. Cary’s car remained parked near the Varsity Theater, just where he’d said he would be. Magnus, on the other hand, was on the move toward Monte Cristo, a ghost town in the Seventy-Six Gulch area. She called Cary, who said they were just going inside the theater to get their seats. Then she called Magnus, who didn’t answer.

  She socked her mocha into the cup holder and pulled out of the espresso stand parking lot and headed toward north toward Arlington, where he had cut off onto SR 530, heading east. She stopped at a McDonald’s to relieve herself and eat. Armed with an iced tea and french fries, she studied her brother’s route on the GPS tracker. He had passed through Oso and was heading toward Tulker. She watched the dot moving while she ate her fries, which had already started churning in her stomach. Around a bend of the road at Darrington, he cut off again, this time onto the Mountain Loop Highway. He traveled this route some distance, then the dot came to a stop at the Barlow Pass Trailhead.

  Molly tossed the rest of the fries into the McDonald’s sack, crumpled the bag closed, and tossed it to the passenger floorboard. Securing her phone in its hands-free mount, she followed his route to the trailhead. The dot was moving slow on the Monte Cristo Trailhead; he must have taken the backpack where she’d hidden the tracker.

  His car was parked on the shoulder near the trailhead, as far off the road as he could get without going into the drainage ditch. Molly parked behind him, shrugged into her coat, hid her purse under the front seat, and began pursuit. The least that would happen was she’d find he was simply taking a hike on the popular trail, and she’d get a good bit of exercise.

  She followed the Monte Cristo trail to the old mining town and beyond, adjusting her path according to his. Then he headed off the trailhead and into the thicket. With one last glance at the bright daylight behind her, Molly plunged into the woods after her brother.

  She braced herself against her desk, sucking air into her starving lungs, then stumbled into her closet, grappled with the raincoat to get the book out of the pocket, and reeled back into the hallway, just in time to hear a key in the front door. Magnus barreled into the entryway and stopped short when he saw her.

  “Molly!” He started for the stairs.

  “Stay there!” she shrieked, and he halted. She pointed to the sitting room with a violently shaking hand. “In there. Get in there. Stay in there until Detective Cohen gets here. Don’t take one more step don’t you dare come near me ever again!”

  Magnus stopped again, his foot on the bottom tread.

  “Do as she says, Mr. McKinley,” a new voice commanded.

  Magnus whirled around. Molly nearly fainted when Cary came through the door, hands upraised in supplication. But he hadn’t spoken; Harvey Cohen stepped through behind him, his service weapon aimed at the back of Cary’s head. When Magnus made no move to obey Cohen’s command, Harvey adjusted his aim to bear on him. Magnus backed away from the stairs slowly, his arms raising like Cary’s. Cohen gave Cary a shove to put more distance between them, his aim now bearing on a point between both men.

  “I’m sorry I’m late, Molly,” he said without looking at her.

  “Everyone’s late,” she answered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Everyone’s too late. I don’t know who it was, Harvey.” She looked down at the book, clutched in her white-knuckled fingers. “If there’s any clue, it’s locked in here.”

  “Molly, don’t read it.” Cary, who had been encouraging her to read the books, even as each revealed more of a dark and ominous past. Cary, who had said the books made him feel hopeful, as though something once lost was moments from being restored to him. Cary, who only recently tried to dissuade her from reading the remaining books as more of the truth was revealed.

  This volume in her hand, the last of the burning books, the final chapter in this bleak and sinister story—was it truly the key to unlocking the missing year? Was it proof that the missing year was not the result of a solar superstorm, but was the hideous purpose of an incomprehensible, terrifying magical event, a spell cast to hide some malevolent deed?

  “Don’t read it,” he repeated.

  His eyes pleaded with her. Those magnificent eyes that begged to be adored, that had looked at her with concern, amusement, passion, and—she had hoped—love. But if he loved her, how could he think she could willfully put away the book, never to be read, and build her happiness upon the heartbreak of the world, whose truth might still be locked in the pages of this last, slim volume? How could she love him when she didn’t know if he’d been the one to slide that knife into her, over and over, leaving the landscape of scars on her body?

  “But what if the memories of the world are inside it? All that heartbreak, all that anguish . . .”

  “What if that truth means you lose your brother?” Cary took a step toward the staircase. Harvey Cohen s
wung his pistol to bear on his son-in-law.

  “Not another inch, Cary.”

  Cary stopped. He didn’t look at Harvey; his gaze remained locked on Molly. “What if the truth inside that book is that Magnus murdered Cecily? That he tortured and would have murdered you because you found him out? Isn’t it better to not know? You have a chance to let the past go and move forward, build a good relationship with your twin without that knowledge between you.”

  “Yes, just a bunch of suspicion and doubt and mistrust between us instead,” Magnus said bitterly. “Less damning than the truth, but just as corrosive. Read the book, Molly. I am weary of wondering, weary of watching you tiptoe around me in fear. Detective Cohen, you might want to aim that gun at me, just in case.”

  Harvey glanced at him, edging behind them so he could better see everyone, putting both men in line with each other, Cary visible over Magnus’s shoulder.

  Cary said quietly, “Molly, please. Give me the book. I love you. I can’t stand to see your heart break.”

  “My heart is already broken. Either my brother is a murderer or my lover is.”

  “We don’t know that either one of us is. We don’t know where Lee is.”

  “How did you get her necklace, Cary? He gave it to her. You gave it to me, so only you could have taken it from her. Was the red camisole hers, too? You gave them to me at the same time. Did you take them both from her when you kidnapped her? Was it before or after you killed her?”

  “I didn’t kill her. And I didn’t give you her necklace. I gave you a gift I selected for you myself. How can you even think I’m capable of murdering my own wife?”

  He took another step toward the stairs. Molly shrank back, holding up a warding hand as Cohen shouted another warning. Cary halted again.

  “The truth will crush us all, Molly. Don’t read the book.”