If Something Happens to Me

Ken stops by Poppy’s office in the morning. After a quick briefing, he gently chides her for talking to former deputy Buckman. He says her father was also reckless like her, and their old commanding officer used to tell him to be more circumspect. Poppy feels chastened and wonders what he’d say if he knew about Fincher talking to her. At the same time, she decides she needs to find the truth even if Ken—her boss and her father’s friend—is hiding something. Then, she gets a tip that catches her interest. A true crime podcast host, Ziggy de la Cruz, claims to have found evidence about Alison and invites Poppy to see him in person before he airs it that evening.

Shane and Gina meet with Pendleton at the school to discuss Anthony’s suicide. The O’Learys find the meeting very unsatisfying. The headmaster takes a pedantic and patronizing tone, denies having any useful knowledge, and claims that talking to students before and after Anthony’s suicide revealed no problems at the school. At that moment, Shane knows that the headmaster is lying: He knows there would have been no reason to talk to students before Anthony’s suicide if Pendleton didn’t know about any problems. After leaving the interview, Shane calls Chaz. He confides that he’s worried about Gina’s mental state and thinks getting answers about why Anthony died might help. He orders Chaz to have their private detective find a way to interview the students at the school and to have their tech guy snoop on the headmaster’s phone.

Ryan wrestles with myriad emotions as he faces “The Monster.” The two large bodyguards frisk him and have fun zapping each other with his ludicrously ineffective mini-Taser. The Monster tells Ryan he needs to convince everyone that MRK killed Alison and that he hallucinated The Monster. When Ryan incredulously asks why he’d do that, The Monster says that someone has recognized him from his missing pinkies; if Ryan doesn’t do what he is asking him to, there will be unimaginable trouble. This will not only endanger The Monster, but also “her” (119). He leaves it unclear who he is referring to, but Ryan leaps at the suggestion that Alison is still alive. The Monster refuses to give a clear answer, saying only that Ryan needs to talk to the sheriff of Leavenworth. Suddenly, The Monster receives a video call. He begs whoever is on the other end of the line not to do something. He then turns to Ryan, announces in a panic that he’s been found, and dashes off.

The two hired thugs block Ryan from immediately following. When they let him leave, he finds Nora waiting for him. She says she has slipped an AirTag into The Monster’s car (though she insists on calling him “The Pinky Man.”) Using the AirTag to guide them, Ryan and Nora follow. The Pinky Man stops once along the way for a few minutes; then, he takes off for the airport.

Poppy drives to Kansas City to meet Ziggy de la Cruz. She discovers that he is a precocious 12-year-old boy. She knows that he has helped solve at least three cold cases, so she still takes him seriously. Ziggy tells Poppy that he has tried to tell the sheriff’s office multiple times that MRK didn’t kill Alison. Since MRK couldn’t drive and never took a victim’s car, the new discovery makes it even more unlikely he is guilty. The new evidence that Ziggy has unearthed is from the DNA testing. He obtained the public records from the original testing of both the hair supposedly found in MRK’s sleeping bag and the sample from a hairbrush Alison’s family provided. He had a forensics professor examine them, and she concluded that both hairs came from the same brush. Someone in the sheriff’s office planted the hair in MRK’s sleeping bag to distract attention from the real culprit. Ziggy says that if Poppy wants answers, she should listen to one of his podcast’s earlier episodes.

Ryan and Nora trace the AirTag to a car rental return at the Florence airport. Ryan circles the airport in the car while Nora dashes inside, but it’s too late—the Pinky Man has disappeared into the sprawling labyrinth of gates. Dejected, Ryan and Nora return to the train station, where Ryan drops Nora off to catch the next train to Rome. He lies to her, saying he needs to drop off the rental van and will be right back. In reality, he doesn’t want her in danger. Instead, he drives to where the Pinky Man briefly stopped on his way to the airport. He discovers it is a bed and breakfast. Pretending to be scoping out accommodations for future law school trips, he learns that the Pinky Man lives in the UK despite having a Philly accent. He sneaks a peek at the guestbook and gets a name and town for the man: Peter Jones of Lackford, England.

Michael and Taylor prepare to attend Anthony’s funeral. Taylor is very shaken. She assures her father that the teens have all carefully scrubbed the videos from the bullying incident from their phones; Michael warns her that Shane is a very dangerous man. When she questions him about why he associates with a man like that, Michael conceals the truth. In fact, his deceased wife was the reason. She had a severe gambling addiction, and when Michael blocked her access to their bank accounts, she borrowed money from the O’Leary syndicate. They showed up at Michael’s door two weeks after she died of cancer and demanded that he work for the O’Learys to clear her debt.

Ryan boards a plane for England. He wonders if he should be reaching out for help, though he ultimately decides that no one would believe him—except Nora. When he lands, he finds a hotel and checks in, and then he cries as he thinks back about Alison. He can’t get over that night. He acknowledges that they weren’t a perfect a couple. Alison confessed to him in senior year that she had made a mistake and kissed another guy. Ryan doesn’t know who it was, but he forgave her. His phone pings, and he sees a text from Nora. He feels guilty for abandoning her; he also struggles because he simultaneously has feelings for both her and the memory of Alison. So, he ignores her text.

Poppy listens to the podcast episode that Ziggy suggested. In it, Ziggy is interviewing a woman who was at Lover’s Lane when Alison disappeared, though the woman didn’t initially come forward since she was married and having an affair. The woman says she saw a tall, lanky man in the darkness spying on Ryan and Alison. She couldn’t identify him, but she did see that he drove a motorcycle with an old-fashioned sidecar. Poppy, to her shock, realizes that the woman is describing Dash.

Shane wanders around the house in a daze at his son’s wake. He misses his child, he worries for his wife, he fears he will seem weak to rivals, and he feels guilty for not locking up his gun that night. Chaz finds him. He reluctantly reports that they found texts on Anthony’s phone that showed him being bullied. Worse, their tech guy hacked into the headmaster’s electronics and found that the bullying had been going on for weeks with the headmaster’s knowledge. The perpetrators—students protected by their powerful parents—had only received a mild reprimand. Finally, he reveals the video from the party from the headmaster’s phone. Shane breaks down crying in sadness and uncontrollable rage. Gina rips the phone away to see it herself and collapses.

Chaz leaves the disheartened couple. He reflects on how Shane’s father physically abused Shane when he was a teenager. Chaz wonders if he could have stopped it, but Shane’s father was his boss and a man who killed his enemies. Chaz also knows that he was a terrible father to his own son, Patrick. As the caterers clean up, he discovers Patrick watching a football game. He rebukes him for being disrespectful, and a moment later Gina appears to do the same. She tells them that after the funeral the next day, she and Shane are going on a trip. She says a real crew would do something about the situation when she is gone. To Chaz’s surprise and worry, Patrick assures Gina that plans are already underway.

Poppy thinks back to Buckman and Ruby’s tips to start investigating at her own house. If Dash did something to Alison, she reasons only one person could have protected him: their father. He could call on the help of his closest friend and companion from the war in Iraq: Sheriff Ken Walton. Poppy steels herself to confront her dad and enters the house. She finds him lying unmoving on the floor.

Michael wakes up to an alert on his phone that Taylor’s school has canceled classes. The headmaster’s residence caught fire overnight, presumably killing him. Michael tries to reassure himself it is just a coincidence when he hears Taylor crying. She tells him that Dylan, one of her friends from the video, has just been found dead after apparently overdosing.

Ryan pulls into the tiny town of Lackford and extracts himself from the cramped Mini Cooper he rented. He goes into the pub to investigate Peter Jones, the Pinky Man. The bartender is unfriendly and suspicious and refuses to provide any information. However, the body language of the patrons tells him he’s on the right track. He decides to try the local church, reasoning a priest shouldn’t lie. The church is empty, but he spies a bulletin board with pictures of the staff. He immediately recognizes the groundskeeper as the Pinky Man.

Michael watches the local news to discover that the fire inspector initially ruled the fire that killed Pendleton as suspicious but suddenly changed his mind. Furthermore, two of Taylor’s friends from the video have died of apparent fentanyl overdoses. Michael comforts Taylor as best he can. Then, Shane calls him. Using code phrases, he tells Michael that there is a rat in the organization, and Michael needs to transfer the O’Leary money he manages to different accounts controlled by someone else. Michael agrees, but he’s frightened. Either someone who can implicate Michael in money laundering is talking to the authorities, or Shane wants to move his money out of Michael’s control so Michael can be replaced.

Poppy’s father is still alive, though he is battling an infection leading to sepsis. She arrives home with Dash after a doctor tells her to go home. Ken was at the hospital, too, and tried to cheer them up by telling war stories to prove how tough her father is.

Poppy sneaks into Dash’s room to see what the red shoebox contains—the contents had made Dash cry when he learned about Alison’s death. Inside, she finds notes written in Alison’s book cipher and the T-shirt that Alison wore on the night of her abduction. Dash catches her and tells her that it’s not what it looks like.

Ryan had passed the groundskeeper’s cottage when he entered the church. He goes back to it and knocks. The door, which is slightly ajar already, swings open. Ryan cautiously enters. In the kitchen, he discovers the bodies of the Pinky Man and his wife. The Pinky Man is missing the rest of his fingers. Blood is everywhere. Suddenly, a man’s voice tells Ryan not to move.

A female FBI agent shows up at Michael’s door. She abruptly begins telling the story of John Favara, a man who accidentally hit the son of mob boss John Giotti with his car. The police cleared the man of wrongdoing. Then, Giotti went on vacation, and Favara suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again. Michael tries to bluff, saying that he doesn’t understand what the agent is implying. She tells him that if he wants to save his daughter’s life, he needs to listen to her.

Dash confesses that he loved Alison. Under Poppy’s incredulous questioning, he says he has her shirt because he went to her house that night to beg her for another chance and saw her leaving with Ryan. He followed them. When he was about to leave, he saw the attacker come in and take off with Alison in the car. Dash followed after them and called their dad for help.

Ryan turns to see a police officer. The horrified young officer radios for backup. When Ryan is taken in for interrogation, he initially demands a lawyer. Then, he relents and tells the police everything. The interrogator, still suspicious, asks him why someone would cut off the man’s remaining fingers. Ryan doesn’t respond but thinks the only two explanations are revenge or using torture to extract more information.

Dash tells Poppy how he followed Alison’s kidnapper to Suncatcher Lake where the abductor parked the car to wait for someone. When his father and the sheriff came, they told him to leave, but Dash hid in the woods to watch. A few minutes later, Alison’s father arrived. At this point in the story, Dash shows Poppy a picture from their fireplace mantle of their father in Iraq with Ken and a third man. That man is Alison’s father.

Dash continues his story. The abductor ran away, pursued by Ken and Poppy’s father. Alison’s father rescued Alison from the car, where she had been tied up. Hearing another car coming, they hid. Two men got out. Alison’s father snuck up on them and shot both in the back of the head. Poppy’s father and Ken returned with the original abductor, but the three war companions decided to let him go. They put the other two men in Alison’s BMW and rolled it into the lake. Dash found Alison’s shirt in the grass after they left.

A shocked Poppy latches onto one crucial fact: Alison is still alive.

A third child from the bullying video has died in an apparent car accident. Out of all the culprits caught in the mirror reflection, only Taylor is still alive. Michael decides he has no choice but to take the FBIs agent’s offer to testify against the O’Learys and enter witness protection (WITSEC). To his surprise, he’s been told to meet the marshals in an old warehouse. As he waits outside the warehouse with Taylor, she is overwhelmed by the thought of leaving all her friends and adopting a new identity; she jumps out of the car and disappears into the warehouse. As he chases after her, a black SUV pulls into the warehouse. A vaguely familiar man in a fancy suit identifies himself as a US Marshal and asks Michael to get in the SUV. Michael sees another man inside the car, whom he recognizes as one of O’Leary’s henchmen. The well-dressed man shoves a pistol in Michael’s back.

Michael assumes that they will underestimate him, since they don’t know that Michael has military training from a tour in Iraq. He pretends to follow the first man’s directions, then he surprises him and knocks him to the ground. Michael dodges behind some barrels as the two O’Leary men shoot at him. They have him cornered. Suddenly, Taylor appears; she is driving Michael’s car and rams one gunman with it. Michael jumps in the car, and they take off. Taylor screams as gunshots hit the car, but they manage to escape. They drive to Kansas, stopping for Michael to get on his computer and steal all the money from the O’Leary accounts. When they get to Leavenworth, Michael reassures her that his army buddies will take care of them and help them create new identities. Taylor’s name will now be Alison Lane. In a surprise twist, the novel reveals that the Philadelphia saga of Michael, Taylor, and the O’Learys happened four years before Alison’s disappearance and nine years before the rest of the events in Part 1.