She looked around at the meadow that surrounded them, the open space beyond the business park. Jones could have parked anywhere and moved behind the buildings, watching them and waiting.
Waiting for what?
“Oh my God!” Sharon gasped, and Lily actually stumbled a little in shock. “I almost forgot to tell you! I have gossip! Kimmy Ross was in, and do you know what she told me this time? Just guess.”
Lily shook her head.
“She’s pregnant! Can you imagine starting over at fifty-one? Not me. I’m fifty-five, and you couldn’t pay me to raise a baby at this age. But Dr. Ross is in pretty good shape. He’s a jogger.”
“He is.”
Sharon threw up her hands in joyful exasperation. “I guess that’s what happens when you marry a young new wife! But God bless him, his youngest daughter checked herself out of rehab and came home, and she must have been really upset about the new baby, because she took off. They reported it to the police. Kimmy is worried sick.”
“Rebecca Ross is the runaway?”
“I’m not even sure you can call her a runaway at eighteen, can you? Poor girl. I hope she doesn’t become one of those lost souls wandering into darker and darker places.”
Lily felt almost guilty about her smaller worries now. “That’s awful. That poor family. I’ll keep them in my thoughts.” She took a step back toward safety. “Listen, I’d better get to work.”
“Come over for wine!” Sharon suggested again, and Lily ignored her, despite a sudden rush of gratitude. She was grateful. Grateful for Everett to have an extended family of sorts, two more adults looking out for him. Two people who might keep him safe from the big, bad world out there.
A world that apparently included his father. The energy drinks were probably a coincidence. But if they weren’t . . . why had she jumped in to protect Jones?
Still . . . she sighed because she knew exactly why. If the police caught him here, right in her backyard, they’d be determined to bring Lily down too, sure she’d been aiding him. And everyone in this town would know the same thing. They’d feel it in their bones. She’d be a villain again, and this time Everett would be included, a little family gang of thieves, permanently tattooed with their crimes.
She couldn’t believe he’d managed to do it again. Pull her into his grimy web just enough to get her stuck, wrapped with the phantom threads for the rest of her life. Lying to everyone again. Lying for him.
Damn him.
She wanted to call Jones now. She’d thought she had the upper hand before, thought he’d been far away and she’d been above it all. But now she was flailing, off balance, desperate to protect her son and this bright new future shining right at her fingertips.
Maybe they could move immediately. She had enough money saved for a security deposit. They could move fifty miles away. One hundred. They could leave this place behind. Leave Jones and Mendelson and even Alex and his uncle. Just walk away, get a new phone number, and start fresh.
Lily sat down at her computer and pulled up a map of all the Neighborhood Storage locations she’d be managing. Then she searched for towns that would provide easy access.
They could go to Oklahoma. A different state entirely, no charges against Jones Arthur there, and not one person who knew them.
She was doing a virtual tour of a house in Stillwater, Oklahoma, when a car pulled through the gate, a man she thought might have been Dr. Ross, though he didn’t turn toward her as he inched past.
Why was she so nervous? Mendelson didn’t even know about the drink cans.
When the police had first taken her in for questioning, she hadn’t quite believed what they’d told her about her husband. After they’d insisted she must have been involved too, she really hadn’t believed them. They had everything wrong. She hadn’t done anything illegal, so Jones probably hadn’t either.
When she’d finally gotten home and retrieved Everett from a kind neighbor, walking through her front door had been the breaking point. They’d destroyed Jones’s home office, torn each drawer out of her kitchen, left every single room of her house in chaos. Even Everett’s clothes had been removed from his dresser and tossed on the floor to be trampled by their shoes.
Monsters. That’s what they’d been. Monsters who’d come to devour her life.
Jones couldn’t have stolen all that money. They didn’t have money, aside from a modest savings account and Jones’s small retirement fund. She’d set her jaw and started cleaning, beginning with Everett’s room so he could go to bed that night without one thought of what had happened.