RATING: SUPERB
SPOILERS!!!
It has been a while since a book surprised me, but this one did. I didn’t expect the ending at all.
Tracy and her team are removed from the case because of jurisdiction issues, and the detective who is in charge of the investigation, Fields, even reports Tracy because she interviewed Andrea’s aunt and therapist when the case was already in the hands of him.
Something that Penny, Andrea’s aunt, said to Tracy makes her wonder if the woman found in the crab pot is really Andrea. The man who found the body described the dead woman’s blue varnished nails, but Penny described Andrea’s habit of biting her nails to the quick. So with the help of the police pathologist, Tracy sends DNA from the dead woman to test and to have it compared with Andrea’s aunt and Devin’s sister. In the end the results prove that the body is not related to Penny, but genetically connected to the sister. That means that the case should go back to them because now it is the murder of a woman totally unconnected with the disappearance Fields was investigating. It is Kins that goes to Nolasco with the results, and they eventually get the case back on the condition that they keep Fields informed.
The next step is to talk to Graham Strickland, and this time Tracy and Kins catch him by surprise when he is in a restaurant. They tell him about Devin, and the man denies having an affair with Devin as Tracy suspects or killing her. Then an Asian-looking woman appears, and Graham talks to her and the woman leaves. The conversation with Graham lasts some more minutes but they don’t get any more information. Kins and Tracy stay in Portland overnight, and they intend to talk to one of Kins’s ex-colleagues, and the next day when they contact him, they learn that the woman they saw in the restaurant with Graham Strickland was found dead in his apartment. Graham has been arrested and wants to talk to Tracy.
Graham tells Tracy that he is ready to tell the truth. He admits to having had an affair with Devin, and when they talked about Andrea’s trust, she kept saying that it was unfair of her not to use her money for the company. She even hinted that if something should happen to Andrea, the money would be his. Graham confesses that he considered killing his wife and Devin knew about it, but he didn’t do anything to Andrea. His plan was to push her off the mountain, but it is true that the night when they camped, she went to the bathroom and he was more tired than usual and couldn’t keep his eyes open. Tracy thinks that Graham was drugged, maybe the tea Andrea made was laced with some narcotic. The next day Andrea was nowhere to be found, and he alerted the authorities. He swears that he didn’t kill her, and when he returned to the city, he didn’t contact Devin straightaway, thinking that it would be suspicious if the police were to find out. When he tried to contact Devin, she was already gone. And now he was dating the dead woman, Megan Chen; he told her to wait for him, and she let herself in, using the code for the door, and apart from him and her, the only people who knew the code were the landlord and Andrea. Graham insists that he is being framed.
On the way back to Seattle, Tracy keeps thinking that Andrea is probably alive, and that means that someone helped her escape the mountains. Andrea has no friends, and she remembers that the only person who knew what she had gone through and would help her is her aunt. Tracy is convinced that Penny helped her. So she goes to Nolasco with her theory and tells him that she needs to talk to the aunt, and Nolasco agrees but she needs to take Fields with her. Tracy is not very happy because she doesn’t like Fields. When she contacts Penny, the woman is reluctant to talk to her, but she eventually agrees.
When they are with Penny, Tracy tells her that she found out that Penny worked for the council and was in a department where she had access to birth certificates, so that means that Penny had access to the birth certificate that Andrea used for a fake driving licence. Tracy says that she knows she helped Andrea. In the end Penny admits the truth and agrees to take them to Andrea. It is a cottage in the middle of the mountains which used to belong to her father and Andrea knew well. Penny says that Andrea had no internet access, television or mobile reception. There is an old truck, and a shotgun.
When Tracy enters the cottage, it is clear what the reason for her disappearance is. Andrea is pregnant and she must have wanted to escape an abusive husband and save her child. When Tracy tells her about Devin, Andrea eventually speaks and says that she killed Devin. Then Tracy tells her to stop saying anything and reads her her Miranda rights. Then she tells Fields that she needs to drive somewhere where she can have reception and warn the local authorities. When she is half-way to the closest town, her phone goes off. It is Fazz. The line keeps breaking up, but she manages to understand what he is trying to say, and Tracy tries to say that he calls the local police but then the line goes dead.
Tracy drives back, realising the truth. It is Fields, who is the killer, and now he has the two women with him. When he was investigating the disappearance of Andrea, he learnt about the trust, who nobody would get, so he wanted it for himself. He discovered about Devin and what she was trying to do, so he killed her, and he also killed Megan Chen to get Graham accused and blamed of the two crimes.
When Tracy approaches the cottage, she hears Fields from behind, telling her to drop the gun, so she has no other option but to obey. Then he gets her into the cottage and they discover that Andrea and Penny are gone, and the shotgun that Tracy had left against the wall is gone. So Fields uses his handcuffs to secure Tracy against a post, and he takes off.
Thankfully a local constable appears because Fazz heard her and phoned the local authorities. The constable releases her from the handcuffs, and taking a rifle that the man has, she takes off after Fields and the women. She knows that she is in obvious disadvantage, but she hopes that Andrea, who knows the mountains well, can outwit Fields. Actually, Andrea is having problems because her aunt can’t keep up with her and she falls a couple of times. Penny says to keep going on without her, but Andrea won’t hear of it, and then she sees Fields not too far. So she uses the shotgun and shoots but misses, and then she sees the man pointing his own gun at her, and she tries to load the shotgun with another shell, but her fingers are cold and unresponsive. Tracy is not far behind, and from her position she shoots and kills Fields.
Later when the police come and Andrea and her aunt are taken into custody, Andrea says that she never meant for Devin to be killed. All she wanted was to give her and Graham a lesson when she took off and have him being a suspect. She explains that she planted some information on Devin’s computer for when she disappeared like her fake identity, but Devin must have found it and tracked the account and Andrea herself. Tracy says that she is not responsible; Fields was. When Andrea asks her if she will have to go to prison, Tracy says that she might have to face charges for deceit and intentionally faked her death and the consequent investigation and use of public funds. Yet, Tracy says that it is not her jurisdiction, and she lets her go, which doesn’t sit well with Nolasco when he hears.
The last chapter is the wedding of Tracy and Dan. He proposed romantically in a lighthouse, which is where they also get married. Dan insisted that she should have a proper wedding, which she didn’t have with her first husband because of her sister’s disappearance.
I really loved the book, and I didn’t guess who the villain was. I had no idea at all.
My Reading Journal 