She managed to get out of the car without incident and then found herself being led up a slope, snow coming up to her knees. Joseph kept an arm around her shoulders and once had to steer her around a rock. An owl hooted in the distance while the scent of pine filled Samantha's nostrils.

The farther they went, the more she thought of the collection of bones in Pryde's cellar. Joseph was a distant relative of Jonas Pryde; could he have the same homicidal tendencies? Maybe he routinely brought girls up here to slaughter. Maybe everything he'd done for her so far was a ruse to lure her into his trap. "My feet are getting wet. Let's go back," she said.

"It's not much farther," he said. Samantha's hands twitched with a life of their own as she imagined how she could incapacitate him. Grab his hand from around her shoulder, spin him around, toss him to the ground, and then-

She didn't want to think about the finishing move. I have to get out of here, she thought. She had to leave before this dark, nameless beast within her struck out at Joseph. No matter what his intention for bringing her out here, she didn't want to hurt him. She couldn't.

They came to a stop and he said, "Ta da." He removed the blindfold from her eyes and she found not a pile of bones, but a wondrous spectacle of nature.

They stood atop a barren hill with the lights of Seabrooke twinkling beneath them to the right and beyond that, the sea sparkling in the moonlight. Above, the stars shone brighter than ever. "It's beautiful," she said.

"It's better in the spring and fall when the weather is better. My mom and I used to come up here when my dad was out at sea. She would point to a tiny little boat out there and say, 'There's Daddy.' I believed her, although how she could tell, I have no idea. It probably wasn't his boat at all, but it always made me feel better."

"Your mother must have really loved your father," Samantha said. "I wish I could remember my parents. I can only remember the night they died. I wish I could remember something else about them, anything else."

"I'm sure they loved you."

"Maybe," she said, the word trailing into the night. They probably had loved her, but how could they love what she had become after they died? It's just as well they never got a chance to see what a horrible person I became, she thought.

"I shouldn't have brought you up here," he said. "I thought it would make you feel better, but now you're only feeling worse. I'm such an idiot!"




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