Marcus stays up late watching hospital security footage. He studies the man who snuck into the hospital and killed Stevens, desperate to determine his identity.

Pam joins him, and they notice the perpetrator removing his gloves; he has one finger shorter than the other. Marcus realizes that it is Kelly’s husband Scott Summers, who had a distinctive hand. (In the previous novel, Scott fled town and hasn’t been heard of since Kelly’s murder. Marcus assumes he came back to avenge Kelly when he heard about Stevens’s arrest.)

Sarah drives Summer to her aunt’s house. Still upset about the divorce, Summer begs Sarah to make amends with Bob. Sarah reiterates that she and Bob love Summer but can’t be together anymore. After dropping Summer off, Sarah gets a call from Bob. He knows she’s going after him in the divorce and threatens her if she doesn’t stop.

Marcus receives a mysterious package at work. He finds a knife inside and sends it to the forensics lab, convinced it has something to do with Sarah and the Kelly Summers case.

Alejandro, reports to the hotel room where Bob is waiting for him. Bob tells Alejandro that he has to go through with their plan and kill Sarah as soon as possible. Alejandro is hesitant but promises to do the job that night if Bob doubles his payment.

Stacy wakes up to the sound of someone else in the building. She calls out for Carissa, but she doesn’t respond. She gropes around and discovers that Carissa is missing. She hears Carissa calling for help and desperately tries to get up the stairs to save her. Finally, she finds a gun and discovers that it’s loaded. She plans to use it to free herself and Carissa.

Alejandro joins Sarah for dinner. He reveals that he got a new job in waste management and won’t need to work for her anymore. They start flirting, and Alejandro grabs and kisses Sarah.

Sarah and Alejandro have sex. Afterward, they lie naked together in bed. Sarah studies his face, realizing Alejandro looks sad. Then she realizes he’s holding a gun to her side. He apologizes before cocking the weapon.

Bob gets a text from Alejandro, saying he finished the job, along with pictures of Sarah lying naked and bloody in her bed. Furious that Alejandro slept with Sarah, Bob calls him. Alejandro demands that Bob give him the money before he cleans up and leaves town.

Bob wants to know if Sarah mentioned Stacy before Alejandro killed her. Alejandro says she didn’t, and now, Bob doesn’t know where Stacy is. Off the phone, Bob remembers the tracker he put on Sarah’s car. He traces her movements on the computer and discovers that she went to their lake house earlier that day.

Stacy creeps up the basement steps with the gun. Upstairs, she sees Bob and shoots him.

Marcus’s colleague calls to say that he followed Bob to a lake house, where he heard screaming and gunshots. Marcus races to the scene. He and his team find Bob’s dead body and discover Stacy weeping with a gun in her hand. Marcus assures her that she’s safe.

Marcus and Pam take Stacy to the hospital, where they ask her more questions about what happened. She explains that Carissa was in the basement with her, but she doesn’t know what happened to her. The police didn’t find Carissa at the lake house.

Marcus and Pam leave and discuss the case. Forensics tested the knife, but it was covered with pig’s blood. They don’t understand why someone would send them the knife in association with Sarah when it’s a false lead. They wonder if Bob was trying to frame Sarah to cover up his involvement with Carissa and Stacy. Desperate for answers, they go to Sarah’s house. Sarah opens the door.

Ten hours earlier, Sarah and Alejandro lie in bed next to each other. Alejandro has a gun to Sarah’s side and she has a gun to his head. Finally, Alejandro admits that Bob hired him to get close to Sarah and then tasked him with killing her.

He also admits that he wanted to complete this job because he failed to kill Kelly 15 years prior, as per Bob’s orders. On the day of the murder, Alejandro went to Kelly’s house, but Kelly wasn’t there. He ran into Greg, and, “thinking he was Kelly” (259), stabbed him. Kelly got home, found Greg, and removed the knife, which accelerated Greg’s death. She was then charged with Greg’s murder; Alejandro never told Bob that Kelly didn’t kill him.

Pleased with this story, Sarah offers to pay Alejandro his fee if he doesn’t kill her. He agrees. They have sex and then stage the murder scene.

The police inform Sarah that Bob is dead. Sarah feigns shock, asking questions about what he did to Stacy and Carissa. She is pleased with her act because she is the one who captured the women and framed Bob.

Weeks ago, Sarah helped Carissa leave town. Carissa was afraid of George hurting her, so Sarah got her a new identity. Carissa staged the murder scene at the salon to make it look like someone had killed her. She used pints of her own blood, which she’d drawn over the weeks leading up to the alleged crime. Sarah made sure that Bob was Carissa’s last customer, so he’d be implicated.

She then drove out to the lake house regularly and pretended to be Carissa. Stacy believed the story that Bob kidnapped Carissa, and so she shot him when he appeared at the house. Sarah was pleased that her plan had gone so well. It had been easy to manipulate Stacy because Sarah had drugged her.

The police speculate that Bob framed Sarah because he wanted full custody of Summer. This isn’t true, but Sarah is pleased with their assessment. She also agrees to let them search Bob’s things. After the police leave, Sarah congratulates herself on her work. Her eyes water with tears of joy.

At Bob’s, the police find another knife covered with fingerprints and blood. Forensics determines that they’re Bob’s prints and it’s Kelly’s blood. Marcus and Pam are pleased to have a resolution, but curious as to how the evidence lined up so neatly. Pam also can’t make sense of why Sarah married Bob in the first place. Marcus doubts that Sarah could concoct such an elaborate plan with Bob to bring down both Adam and Kelly, and he thinks it’s more likely that Bob was disturbed and used Sarah.

A year later, Sarah gives an interview on 60 Minutes. The interviewer Caroline Wood asks Sarah about Adam, Bob, and Summer’s response to Bob’s death. Sarah feels a little guilty for lying to Summer about Bob, but she knows it was for the best. She answers Caroline’s questions, careful to show that she’s grieving.

Caroline then asks about the millions of dollars Sarah got in the wrongful death suit—Eleanor died before it was resolved, leaving Sarah with all of the money. Sarah says she’s setting some aside for Summer and putting some into the foundation. She asserts that her generosity isn’t a choice but just who she is.