Hairpin Bridge

Three months after her identical twin sister Cambry Nguyen dies in an apparent suicide at a remote Montana bridge, 24-year-old Lena Nguyen travels from Seattle to confront the man she believes is responsible. Cambry had been living out of her Toyota Corolla during a nine-month solo cross-country road trip when she was found dead at the base of Hairpin Bridge, a decommissioned steel structure spanning a deep valley roughly 70 miles from Missoula. The death was ruled a suicide. Lena does not accept this.

The novel alternates between three narrative threads: Lena's present-day confrontation with Corporal Raymond Raycevic, the Montana highway patrolman who discovered Cambry's body; flashbacks depicting Cambry's final hours on June 6; and entries from Lena's blog, Lights and Sounds, in which she lays out her case and describes her preparations. Her blog posts reveal that Lena has been suicidal and views the confrontation as a form of atonement.

Driving Cambry's car, Lena meets Raycevic at the Magma Springs Diner near the bridge. Before leaving, she checks a laptop connected to the restaurant's Wi-Fi, part of a hidden plan. At the bridge, using a Shoebox cassette recorder, she records Raycevic's account of finding Cambry's body 200 feet below on June 7. She presses him on a troubling coincidence: He pulled Cambry over for speeding the previous day. She also questions 16 failed 911 calls on Cambry's phone, the first logged 13 minutes after the traffic stop. Raycevic claims he is also a twin whose brother died by suicide and urges Lena to stop investigating.

The narrative shifts to Cambry's perspective on June 6. While hiking near a campground, she spots four small fires on a remote cement foundation, each contained in a pyramid of stacked stones. A shirtless man tends them. When he sees Cambry watching through binoculars, he sprints toward her. She flees to her car and drives away, only to be pulled over by a police cruiser. The officer is the same man, now in a half-buttoned patrol uniform: Corporal Raymond R. Raycevic. He orders her out of the car and places his hand on his holstered pistol. Cambry pretends to comply, then shifts into drive and escapes.

A high-speed chase unfolds on dark back roads. Cambry's fuel is nearly gone. She hides on a closed road with her lights off, but lightning reveals her position and Raycevic resumes pursuit. He pulls alongside with his Glock drawn but hesitates because another vehicle ahead could serve as a witness. During the chase, Cambry realizes the fires were a body-cremation site. She reaches the other vehicle, a semitruck stenciled SIDEWINDER, and climbs into its empty cab. A figure cloaked in plastic sheeting attacks her, choking her with a technique designed to leave no bruises. Cambry feigns unconsciousness, stabs him in the eye with her folding knife, and escapes.

Back on Hairpin Bridge, Lena confronts Raycevic with evidence: Cambry's signature doodle scratched into his back seat, worn brake pads suggesting a chase, and a contradiction in his own report about the bridge's nickname. Raycevic admits the traffic stop was not for speeding and that Cambry saw something she should not have.

Lena reveals a concealed Beretta Px4 Storm pistol and months of intensive firearms training. She forces Raycevic to throw his weapons over the railing, demonstrates her marksmanship with three shots into a sign 50 yards away, and handcuffs him. A red 18-wheeler bearing the SIDEWINDER logo then arrives. Raycevic claims Cambry was his girlfriend, but Lena senses a trap: He has been subtly repositioning her so her back faces the truck. Inside the cab, a hidden gunman aims a Winchester rifle at Lena, with handwritten notes on the dashboard reading "MAKE HER GONE" and "LENA NGUYEN. HAIRPIN BRDG. UNARMED."

Raycevic mouths "Shoot." Lena senses the danger, spins, and fires first. A full gunfight erupts: The trucker fires the Winchester from one side while Raycevic produces a concealed revolver from an ankle holster, catching Lena in a crossfire. Her Beretta jams, but she clears it and fires her last rounds through the truck's door, striking the gunman, who is revealed as Theo Raycevic, the corporal's father. With her gun empty, Lena removes her shoes, circles behind Raycevic in her socks using the same hide-and-seek technique Cambry employed as a child, and disarms him.

After reloading and confirming Theo is dead, Lena forces a confession. Theo was a serial killer who targeted vulnerable women on highways, abducting and murdering them while wearing full plastic coverings to leave no forensic trace. The man Lena has known as Raymond is actually Rick Raycevic. He discovered his father's crimes at 18; his twin brother Ray, the real Raymond, died by suicide upon learning the truth. Rick assumed Ray's identity, entered the police academy, and spent 17 years covering up his father's murders. He lists 14 victims by name. He also confesses to killing a young boy whom Theo left behind after abducting the child's mother. Rick kept the boy in a shed for three months before dropping him down a dry groundwater well.

Rick reveals a further truth: Cambry had genuinely been his girlfriend. She witnessed a kidnapped woman escape Theo's truck and hold Rick at gunpoint. Cambry shot the woman with a .25-caliber pistol, saving Rick's life, only to realize she had killed an innocent kidnapping victim. Cambry fled but ran out of gas on Hairpin Bridge, trapped between Rick's patrol car and Theo's truck. Rick forced her to the edge, threatening her family. Cambry climbed the guardrail and jumped to protect them. Her suicide text, "Please forgive me. I couldn't live with it. Hopefully you can, Officer Raycevic," was genuine, not fabricated as Lena believed. Cambry intended it for Rick but accidentally sent it to Lena because "Ratface," her nickname for Lena, sat adjacent to "Ray" in her contacts.

Rick attacks Lena. His ballistic vest stops her chest shots, and he beats her severely before seizing the Beretta. The gun fails to fire due to a malfunction, and Lena scrambles to the Corolla, reverses at full speed, and crushes his legs between the cars. Rick reaches an AR-15 from his cruiser's trunk. Lena puts on Cambry's glasses, steps into the open, and fires first in a 50-yard duel, killing him.

Lena's blog reveals that the entire conversation was transmitted through a walkie-talkie duct-taped to the back of the Shoebox recorder, linked to the laptop at the diner and uploading to the cloud, set to auto-publish on her blog at midnight. Her posts also confess a childhood betrayal: When Lena and Cambry were 12, they found an injured doe. Lena begged Cambry to kill it, then told their parents Cambry acted alone. The incident led to Cambry's social ostracism and a psychotherapy referral, and Lena acknowledges it may have set in motion the chain of events leading to her sister's death.

Lena drives back to the diner, confirms the recording uploaded, and disassembles her gun. A recurring dream of Cambry telling her "Go, Lena. You're running out of time" takes on new meaning. She drives to the Raycevic property, where she and a following officer hear a cry from the groundwater well: The boy Rick claimed to have killed survived the 40-foot fall. Lena descends the shaft and sits with him until rescuers arrive, whispering that her sister helped her find him.