“There!” she said, standing. Snatching the gun out of the waistband of her pants, she pressed the muzzle to Anna’s temple. “This time, promise me you’ll die.”
Anna closed her eyes and wondered what a person was supposed to think at a time like this.
“Denise? Honey?” The door was pushed open. Paulette stood in the faint spill of lamplight, her pink scrubs as rumpled as pajamas in the morning. “My God!” She stepped in and closed the door behind her. “Denise, what are you doing? Put that gun down.” Her eyes on the baby, she stepped onto the rug in front of Anna. Dropping to her knees, she wailed, “No! You promised you wouldn’t take the baby.” She reached out as if she’d scoop it out of Anna’s tape-and-bone bassinet, then froze. “This isn’t the Frazier baby. Denise! What have you done?”
“She’s kidnapped Peter Barnes’s daughter, Olivia,” Anna said. “The baby is sick. It was in the hospital for observation.”
“Shut up!” Denise snarled.
“You’re dead!” Paulette exclaimed, noticing Anna for the first time.
“Yes I am,” Anna replied, wondering if it was true. “I’ve come back to save this child. If we don’t get her back to the hospital, she’ll die.”
“Olivia Barnes? The three-month-old admitted for a seizure? Denise, you said you were going to save a life!” She looked up at her twin accusingly.
“I did, Paulette,” Denise said, the gun lowered to her side. “I did. It was the only way. Lily, her mom, has Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome. She poisoned Olivia with ergotamine so she could go to the hospital and be the big hero. If we don’t get the baby away, eventually Lily will kill her.”
Paulette rocked back on her heels. “How could any mother … Oh, Denise! This is so awful. What can we do?”
“We have to get the baby and ourselves away from here, leave no hint to where we’ve gone, or that it was us who saved the baby,” Denise said.
Mood swings was an understatement; she sounded so rational, so believable, that for a second Anna wondered if it could be true. “Ergotamine,” Anna said suddenly. “How do you know the baby was poisoned with ergotamine?”
Paulette looked from her sister to Anna, then back to her sister. “The doctors didn’t know what made the baby sick,” Paulette said. Tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, Denise! You did it! You poisoned one of my babies. You …
“Help!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet. “Help! Somebody help me!” She reached the door and pulled it open.
The gun rose from Denise’s side, leveled on Paulette’s back.
“Gun!” Anna yelled because that’s what she’d been trained to do.
A flash of muzzle fire and a blast, so loud in the small room that it numbed Anna’s eardrums, shook the shed. Denise was turning, gun in hand. Before she could aim a second shot, Anna fell to her side, the baby affixed to her chest toppling with her, and whipped her legs out, knocking Denise’s feet from under her. The gun hit the floor and skittered to the center of the round rug.
Cursing, Denise crawled for it. Whiplashing her feet, Anna managed to kick the SIG Sauer. The pistol slid over and stopped against Paulette’s thigh. Paulette Duffy lay facedown, halfway in and halfway out of the nursery, a stain of blood blooming across the pink teddy bears on the back of her scrubs. There might have been life left in the woman, but Anna doubted it. The bullet had entered the left side of Paulette Duffy’s back below the shoulder blade near the spine. The heart had probably been next on its trajectory.
Denise followed the gun. Trying to beat her to it, though the gun was out of her reach now and, she expected, forever, Anna flipped open and shut like a broken jackknife, getting nowhere. No crying from the baby. She hoped she hadn’t smashed it.
Denise didn’t grab up the SIG Sauer. Coming to her knees beside her sister’s bleeding body, she covered her mouth with both hands. Moving in slow motion, she turned her head toward Anna. The hands floated down.
“What have I done?” she asked in a bewildered tone.
“You’ve killed your identical twin sister,” Anna said. “Shot her in the back.”
With a keening wail, Denise dragged Paulette up from the floor, cradling her in her lap. Denise’s newly blond hair fell over Paulette’s face, mingling with Paulette’s bleached mess until no difference could be seen between them. Identical noses close, one face in repose, the other in a rictus of grief, Denise’s tears dripped onto Paulette’s cheeks.
From somewhere in the room the radio crackled. “Anna … Duffy house … Roadblocks…” Anna’s message had gotten through.
Arms wrapped her around her sister, Denise began to rock. As if an invisible hand arrested her movement, she stopped suddenly. Misery blinked out, cheeks still awash with tears, Denise looked almost happy. Anna watched as her hand dipped into the pocket of Paulette’s smock. Pulling out an empty unused syringe, she held it up to the lantern light and smiled.
Using her teeth, Denise uncapped the needle. Thumb on the plunger, she jammed the needle into her carotid artery and ripped downward. Blood sprayed out in a crimson wave, then pulsed ever smaller fountains of red. The sisters’ blood mixed until both were dyed red with it and Anna couldn’t tell where Denise began and Paulette left off.
Sirens sounded in the distance. “Your daddy is coming,” Anna whispered to Olivia.
Expelling a sigh, Anna looked away from the tragedy clogging the door, her eyes moving to the painted sunlight through the fake windows.
There had been an instant, a moment in time, when Anna might have been able to say or do something that would have stopped Denise, saved her life.
But it would not have been a kindness.
ALSO BY NEVADA BARR
FICTION
Anna Pigeon Books
Destroyer Angel
The Rope
Borderline
Winter Study
Hard Truth
High Country
Flashback
Hunting Season
Blood Lure
Deep South
Liberty Falling
Blind Descent
Endangered Species
Firestorm
Ill Wind (a.k.a. Mountain of Bones)
A Superior Death
Track of the Cat
OTHER NOVELS
Bittersweet
13½
NONFICTION
Seeking Enlightenment—Hat by Hat
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NEVADA BARR is a novelist, actor, and artist best known for her New York Times bestselling, award-winning novels featuring Anna Pigeon. A former National Park Service ranger, she currently lives New Orleans. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter
30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Also by Nevada Barr
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BOAR ISLAND. Copyright © 2016 by Nevada Barr. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photo-illustration by Larry Rostant
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-06469-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-7093-2 (e-book)
ISBN 978-1-250-11068-8 (signed edition)
e-ISBN 9781466870932
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First Edition: May 2016