At the rental car counter, Clare presents her identification and secures the rental without incident. The clerk leads her to a small parking lot and a car only big enough for Clare, her duffel bag in the hatchback, and her backpack on the passenger seat. Clare turns the ignition, then sits in the quiet of the car to catch her breath. Her body’s wounds emit a constant dull ache. She will check in to the hotel later. First, she will drive to Malcolm’s marital home.
Clare reverses out of the parking space and onto the wide road. The outskirts of Lune Bay look like any other town, box stores and fast-food restaurants. But as Clare descends towards the water, the real Lune Bay begins to form. Modern houses perched on hills to catch any ocean view, winding streets bookended by coffee shops and bakeries. Zoe’s father, Jack Westman, was the developer who upgraded this once humble village to a suburban utopia. Clare follows the pings of the car’s GPS until she lands on a road ablaze in sunset light. She pulls over and looks westward. And there she sees it, where the road drops away: the straight line of the ocean, a ball of sun hovering just over its horizon. The shock of colors takes Clare aback. A town hovering on the edge of the sea. She lowers the car window and inhales, the texture of the salt air still so novel to her. Clare could almost laugh at the fact that this sunset makes her angry, its beauty like an affront. What is she angry at? Jason? A husband so vicious he gave her no choice but to run? Malcolm? The man who lured her into investigation work, then abandoned her? All Clare knows is that these days the anger simmers below the surface always, its cause and its targets indecipherable. Clare takes another deep breath. Focus.
You can do this, she thinks. You are good at this work. You have a plan.
She taps at the GPS again. Northshore Drive. Two miles from here through the center of Lune Bay and then along a cliffside road. This strange city, home to Malcolm before Clare knew him. Can she conjure what his life might have been like here before his wife disappeared? The network they would have built, the connections to his wife Zoe’s family, the Westmans. A family name tied to Lune Bay at every corner, but tied murkily to crime too, bribes and shady dealings, Jack Westman’s murder five years ago, and then Zoe’s disappearance three years later. Can Clare fathom Malcolm’s panic after the police pegged him as the only viable suspect in his wife’s disappearance? A panic that led him to flee Lune Bay too.
You are the best person to find him, Somers said. You know him better than anyone.
No, I don’t, Clare thinks now. All she has is a plan. The plan is to be detached, assertive, to reconstruct Malcolm’s world as she searches for him. There is a gentle flip in Clare’s chest, her heart’s way of warning her.
The GPS pings and Clare makes a sharp turn down a winding residential street. The lots are large, houses hidden behind brick walls or wrought iron fences lined with tall shrubs. In the space between two houses, Clare catches a quick sight of the water. The ocean is too close. Here, you could just wander off a cliff and never be seen again.
Northshore Drive. Clare slows at each house, peering out the windshield to read the numbers. She reaches the dead end and sees it, two silver digits nailed to a tall tree. 28. The house itself must be down the hill. Clare parks and yanks the emergency brake.
The light has faded still. Clare sits in silence for a moment. No. There is no time to think. She retrieves her gun from her backpack before stuffing the bag into the passenger footwell. Clare checks the weapon, then tucks it into the belt of her jeans, the cool metal a familiar comfort against her skin. When she opens the car door she is struck by the coolness of the air.
The driveway follows a steep incline to a wrought iron gate marked with an H. Malcolm Hayes. Malcolm Boon’s real name.
The gate is unlocked. Clare passes through and turns the last corner. The house is perched on a rocky hillside. She can hear the ocean though she cannot see it, the shifting hum of crashing waves. In the photographs from news stories this house had looked much different. The Glass Box, it was called. An architectural marvel that glowed against its backdrop. A home built by Malcolm Hayes and his wife, Zoe Westman, only a year before she went missing. The last place anyone from Lune Bay saw either of them alive. Clare straightens up and takes a deep breath. Start at the beginning, Somers said to her. For Clare, the beginning is not with the police officers investigating this case. The beginning is here.
The windows of this glass house are black with darkness. A small, rocky moat of sorts separates the house from the path that curls off the driveway. Clare takes the small bridge to the front door. This house feels somehow inharmonious with what Clare knows of Malcolm—it’s too modern, flashy. Not like him at all.
Clare knocks on the large metal door. Nothing. She knocks once more, waits, then crosses the
