Opening
At a rain-lashed lake cabin, Wendy Garrick toasts a murder she thinks she’s pinned on Millie Calloway, with Russell Simonds cowering by her side. In a rapid cascade of shocks—an erased inheritance, damning surveillance, and a fresh killing—Wendy’s victory flips into a nightmare, plunging her into darkness where a silent hunter closes in.
What Happens
Chapter 66: A Dinky Two-Bedroom Cabin
The point of view shifts to Wendy, who holes up with Russell at his wife’s lake cabin to escape the media frenzy over Douglas Garrick’s murder. High on triumph, she savors the fortune she expects to inherit and the success of framing Millie. In her head, she sneers at Russell’s timidity—he hid while she did the killing—and notes with irritation that he keeps mentioning his wife, Marybeth Simonds, with softening regret. Bad sign.
Wrapped in a towel, Wendy fetches wine and spots a window yawning open into the storm. The sight unsettles her, but she shrugs it off as an oversight. Celebration trumps suspicion.
Chapter 67: Pull Yourself Together
Wendy muscles the window shut against wind and rain and returns to find Russell sobbing, crushed under guilt: “I can’t believe we killed him.” Wendy’s response is ice. She orders him to pull himself together and insists Douglas was a monster who tormented her—privately acknowledging his anger came from her cheating and her lie about infertility.
She doubles down on control. She seduces Russell and pours cheap pinot noir, confident he’ll drown his conscience in alcohol and sex. For Wendy, remorse is just a problem to be managed.
Chapter 68: A Rich Bitch
Buzzing with triumph after more wine, Wendy takes a call from Joe Bendeck, Douglas’s best friend and lawyer, and slips into her “rich bitch” persona to demand her payout. The blow lands hard: Douglas changed his will a month ago, leaving everything to charity and calling Wendy a “lying, manipulative bitch.” She gets nothing—no penthouse, no Long Island house—and needs to vacate both.
As her future vaporizes, the NYPD calls.
Chapter 69: The Back Door
Expecting Millie’s arrest, Wendy instead hears two devastating updates from Detective Rodriguez. First, Millie is missing. Second, a building manager revealed a hidden security camera at the penthouse’s back entrance—installed by Douglas. The reviewed footage shreds Wendy’s story: Douglas hasn’t been to the apartment in months, and on the night of the murder he arrives after Millie has already left. Millie is exonerated. Wendy and Russell are placed at the scene.
Rodriguez asks Wendy to come in. Panic spikes. Over a crash and splash from the bathroom, Wendy scrambles for a new angle: claim self-defense against an abusive husband. She calls for Russell so they can sync their lies—then stumbles into the bathroom and freezes. Russell is in the tub, throat slit, the water a dark, spreading red.
Chapter 70: She’s in the Kitchen with Me
Wendy realizes someone slipped in and killed Russell while she was on the phone. That open window now screams entry point. One name surges up—Millie—who has motive, rage, and a violent past. Then the power dies. The cabin goes black.
Wendy calls out, babbling apologies and shifting blame to Douglas. Silence answers, followed by shattering glass. She bolts for the kitchen to arm herself, slides through a smear of tracked blood, and reaches for the knife block—gone. The killer is a step ahead. Footsteps approach in the pitch dark.
Character Development
Wendy’s mask finally cracks. She strides in as a swaggering mastermind and ends the section hunted and unarmed, forced to confront the ruin she created.
- Wendy Garrick: Cold, arrogant, and ruthlessly manipulative, she weaponizes sex, alcohol, and lies to manage Russell and the police. The will reversal and camera footage strip her illusions of control; by the end, her predator persona flips to prey.
- Russell Simonds: Paralyzed by guilt and regret, especially about Marybeth, he can’t stomach their crime. His weakness and conscience make him a liability—and then a corpse—once the noose tightens around Wendy.
Themes & Symbols
- Justice and Revenge drives every turn. Douglas enacts posthumous justice by cutting Wendy off; the hidden footage clears Millie; Russell pays with his life; and a vengeful presence hunts Wendy through the dark.
- Appearance vs. Reality unravels fast. The cozy celebration hides a crime scene in waiting. The “perfect frame job” collapses under a single camera angle, exposing who was where—and who wasn’t.
- Deception and Manipulation reaches its limit. Wendy spins stories, seduces, and sneers, but hard evidence and a silent killer refuse to be manipulated.
Symbols sharpen the descent. The storm batters the cabin as Wendy’s life implodes; the blackout traps her in literal and moral darkness, stripping away her power and vision while the consequences she tried to outrun close in.
Key Quotes
“I can’t believe we killed him.” Russell’s raw confession marks the moral fault line between him and Wendy. His guilt humanizes him and foreshadows his vulnerability; her contempt isolates her and sets her up for the fall.
“Pull yourself together.” Wendy’s command reduces murder to a hiccup of optics. It crystallizes her chilling pragmatism—control the story, control the people—and hints at how quickly that control will evaporate.
“Douglas changed his will a month ago… He called you a ‘lying, manipulative bitch.’” Joe’s call detonates Wendy’s endgame. Wealth was her motive, leverage, and comfort—without it, she’s exposed, desperate, and dangerously improvisational.
“Your husband was the one who provided the security equipment… because he was worried about that back entrance.” The hidden camera becomes poetic justice. Douglas’s paranoia supplies the very proof that clears Millie and incriminates Wendy, turning her narrative against her.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters form the climax’s hinge. One by one, the supports of Wendy’s scheme collapse: the money disappears, the alibi implodes, the accomplice dies. The genre tilts from psychological chess to slasher claustrophobia, isolating Wendy in a trap of her own making. By flipping the predator-prey dynamic and re-centering the evidence on the truth, the section delivers the consequences Wendy has evaded and sets the stage for the final confrontation—and the revelation of the true mastermind lurking behind the darkness.