Chapter 4 - THE CAR BEHIND THEM
Ethan did not tell Claire immediately. He watched the silver SUV through the rearview mirror while rain streaked the windshield and truck tires threw sheets of water across the interstate. Maisie was asleep in the back seat with her stuffed rabbit pressed beneath her chin. Claire was reading directions on her phone, unaware that Ethan’s pulse had begun beating in his throat.
He took the next exit without signaling until the last possible second. The SUV followed. Ethan turned into a gas station, circled the building, and pulled back onto the access road. The SUV appeared twenty seconds later. This time Claire noticed the change in his face.
“What is it?” she asked. Ethan kept his eyes ahead. “There’s a car behind us. It’s been with us since Connecticut.” Claire twisted in her seat, but he caught her wrist. “Don’t look. Not yet.” The request made the danger feel more real than shouting would have.
Ethan called Detective Ruiz through the car’s hands-free system. Ruiz told him to stay on main roads and drive toward the nearest state-police barracks. She contacted Vermont authorities while Ethan continued north. The silver SUV remained behind them for another six miles, then abruptly accelerated, passed on the left, and disappeared into the rain.
Claire saw only the driver’s profile. A baseball cap, dark glasses, and a pale cheek. “Was it her?” Ethan asked. Claire shook her head. “I couldn’t tell.” Maisie woke from their voices and asked why Mommy looked scared. Claire turned around with a smile that felt like lifting something impossibly heavy. “Just bad weather, baby.”
State police found no SUV near the barracks. They took a report, reviewed traffic-camera footage, and promised to alert units along the route. One blurry image captured part of the plate, but it did not match Sloane or her family. The vehicle had likely been rented or borrowed.
The lake house sat at the end of a private road between dense pines, more cabin than mansion despite Ethan’s sister’s success. By the time the Bennetts arrived, the rain had softened into mist. A black lake stretched beyond the porch, perfectly still except where drops touched the surface.
For the first evening, the place seemed to work its magic. Maisie discovered a box of old board games and insisted on playing every one of them. Claire made grilled cheese in a kitchen smaller than the pantry back home. Ethan built a fire and burned the first two logs because he had forgotten to open the flue.
Maisie laughed at the smoke alarm, and the sound filled the room so completely that Claire had to turn away for a moment. It was the first time she had heard her daughter laugh since the bedroom door broke. Ethan saw her wipe her eyes but did not say anything.
Later, after Maisie fell asleep between them, Claire and Ethan sat on the porch wrapped in blankets. The lake was invisible in the darkness. Claire finally asked the question she had avoided since Detective Ruiz found the folder on Sloane’s laptop.
“Did you ever give her hope?” Ethan’s head turned sharply. Claire held up a hand. “I’m not accusing you of an affair. I need to know if there was anything—anything—that she could have interpreted as permission.”
Ethan was quiet for a long time. Then he told her about a night six months earlier when a business deal collapsed. He and Sloane had worked until after midnight. He had been exhausted and angry, and he complained that Claire wanted him to scale back his travel after Maisie started preschool.
“I said I felt like everyone needed something from me,” he admitted. “Sloane said she understood. I told her sometimes I wished I could disappear for a week.” Claire stared out into the dark. Ethan continued. “That’s it. But I can see how she used it.”
Claire’s pain surprised her because the confession was so ordinary. Marriages contained complaints, moments of frustration, sentences spoken badly after midnight. Healthy people heard them and moved on. Sloane had apparently collected them like evidence.
“I needed you too,” Claire said. “I just didn’t know you were telling someone else that my needing you felt like a burden.” Ethan’s face tightened. “I’m sorry.” This time the words did not ask for immediate forgiveness. They simply sat between them.
The next morning, Maisie refused pancakes because she wanted to feed ducks at the water. Claire told her they had to wait until Daddy finished a call with Detective Ruiz. Ruiz had new information. Sloane’s brother’s gray sedan had been found abandoned outside Albany. Inside, police discovered gloves, several prepaid phones, and printed directions to the Bennett house.
But Sloane’s fingerprints were not on the car. Neither were her brother’s. Someone had wiped the interior clean.
“There may be another person involved,” Ruiz said. “Do not assume she’s working alone.” Ethan looked through the cabin window toward the trees. “Does anyone know we’re here?” Ruiz said only Ethan’s sister, Ruiz herself, and one supervising officer.
That afternoon, Claire found footprints beneath the guest-room window.
They were faint in the damp earth, but unmistakable. Adult shoes. The prints led from the tree line to the side of the house and back again. Ethan called police while Claire carried Maisie into the locked upstairs bedroom.
Troopers searched the property for an hour. They found no person, no vehicle, and no second trail. One officer suggested the footprints might belong to a maintenance worker from before their arrival. Ethan wanted to believe him.
Then Maisie pointed to the window and said, “That lady was there last night.”
The room went silent. Claire knelt. “What lady, sweetheart?” Maisie hugged her rabbit. “The lady with yellow hair. She looked in when you were sleeping.”
Sloane’s hair was dark brown.
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Claire and Ethan exchanged a look. For the first time, the danger became something worse than an obsessed woman they knew. There was another face in the story, one neither of them could name.
And somewhere beyond the pines, someone had learned where they were hiding.
