“I get that.” Heath’s tone is softer now. He reaches over, touching her arm. “After ten years, of course you’re worried about him.”
“Yes, I am.”
“My focus is on you. I don’t want to see you get destroyed alongside him.”
Heath wouldn’t be saying that if he knew the real story. He would know Wes is protecting her, not the other way around.
Then again, this is Heath. Even if he did know, he wouldn’t give Wes any credit for it.
“So what’s it going to be today?” she says. “I should break up with him, ignore him, not try to help? He’s toxic, he’s horrible, he’s ruining my life, I should find someone nicer, calmer, not as volatile, so I can be in a healthy, functional relationship?” Ivy pauses to take a sip of water. “Do I have that right?”
She has heard it all. Every insult, every judgment. There was a time they made it a game, when Heath would give her a reason why she should leave Wes—for good—and she would counter with a reason why she shouldn’t. She always won.
That was all in fun, though. This is not.
Heath looks shocked at her outburst. He shouldn’t be. After knowing her for so many years, he should know exactly what she’s like. She can be more volatile than Wes.
“Ivy, I’m just trying to be a friend,” he says.
“Wes basically lost his job. He can’t leave his house because he has an ankle monitor. He’s spending every penny he has on a lawyer. His entire life is falling apart, and he hasn’t been convicted of anything. So, please, if you asked me here to talk about how terrible he is, don’t. Just don’t.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I invited you to lunch to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m great. Compared to Wes, I’m perfect.”
She takes a big bite of her sandwich, though she isn’t hungry at all. She just doesn’t want to talk anymore.
* * *
—
Wes doesn’t come up again during their short lunch. Ivy asks Heath about his life, to keep herself distracted. It doesn’t help, though. When she walks out of the café, she takes a big gulp of fresh air like she’s been underwater for the past half hour.
She knew this would be hard; she just didn’t realize how hard. Her body aches, because she is tensed up all the time. Her head hurts from thinking about it, and from obsessively scrolling through the news, looking for the latest. Like she does right now.
Nothing new has been released—or leaked—by the DA’s office, and Wes’s lawyer isn’t saying a word. This may be the only good thing that happens today. She’ll take it.
When she gets back to her office, she texts Wes to see how the meeting with his lawyer went. It was supposed to start at eleven o’clock. Now it’s after one, and he hasn’t contacted her.
Hey, how did it go today?
His answer comes in a few minutes: We’ll talk about it later.
Not encouraging.
When she leaves work and heads to his place, she tries to brace herself for whatever is coming. At least there aren’t any reporters outside.
She unlocks the front door. After all this time, she finally has a key to his house and it doesn’t feel like a victory.
The air inside feels heavy, weighted down with something she can’t see. She finds Wes sitting on the couch. Nothing in his hands—no phone or book or anything else. The TV is off.
Wes is staring at the wall. She sits down next to him and takes his hand in hers. “Tell me,” she says.
He shakes his head once and looks at the floor. Then he starts to cry.
66
Karen’s sergeant is not happy. She can tell by the way his left eye twitches. He’s upset about the interview she gave to the local paper, which isn’t a surprise. Her sergeant has always been a surly little man with one hell of a mean streak. Borderline sadistic, in her opinion. She forces herself to look right at him, hoping her nerves don’t show. He called her into his office specifically to talk about the interview.
Karen reminds herself that she’s the one who figured out who killed Joey Fisher. He can’t take that away from her, and he can’t fire her without a public relations nightmare, because the media would speculate it’s about the case. Everything would be thrown into chaos, tainting the potential jury pool, and he knows it. She repeats this in her mind, over and over, trying to stay calm.
“I’m so disappointed,” he says. “You know better than to talk to the press.”
She nods. “I won’t do it again.”
He taps a pen against his desk, like he’s thinking. Hopefully, about Joey Fisher.
“See that you don’t,” he says. “I’ll be watching.”
Meeting over.
Karen holds her head high as she walks back to her desk, where a message from the ADA is waiting. She likes Jocelyn; she really does. Smart, determined, capable. She is someone Karen looks forward to working with more in the future.
She returns Jocelyn’s call, answering a few questions about items found during the searches at Siphon and Wes’s house. No one had been able to get into his laptop yet, something that irritates everybody, and Jocelyn is still working on the phone provider. Wes has fingerprint security on his cell, and they haven’t been able to access a thing there, either.
“Do you think you’ll need the electronic records?” Karen says. “It seems like there’s so much evidence against him.”
“More is better,” Jocelyn says. “The video from your crash expert will be compelling to a jury, but the witness may be what pushes Wes into taking a deal.”
The witness.
Pure luck. Even Karen couldn’t deny that, because she never saw it coming.
“I gave you the taxi records,” Karen says. “Ivy took a cab to work that night. Wes had the car.”
“Yes, I have that.”
“And the memorial fund?”
“I have someone looking into Wes’s finances to confirm that,” Jocelyn says. “We haven’t found anything to indicate he actually donated.”
Bianca is the one who gave Karen that information. She had been in Wes’s office one day and happened to see the Joey Fisher memorial fund pulled up on his computer. Looking up Joey’s fund, or donating to it, doesn’t mean Wes killed him. Still helpful, though. It was yet another link between the two, and combined with everything else, it’s one more piece of the puzzle.
Karen isn’t surprised, either. Wes works in finance. He’s exactly the kind of guy who would try to buy his way out of guilt.
She knew from the start that connecting with Bianca was a good idea. Karen learned early in her career that assistants can be your best friend or your worst enemy. They know everything.
Bianca certainly does. The memorial fund wasn’t the only thing she found.
* * *
—
Wes finally calms down enough to tell Ivy what his lawyer said. Every bad thing, because nothing Bryce said was good. Ivy is silent throughout, which means she knows it, too.
“This witness,” she says. “When did we ever argue about the accident? And in public? We never even talked about it.”
“I know.”
He has been racking his brain, trying to figure it out. They have argued so many times and in so many places, but he can’t think of a single time they fought about that night. Or who would have heard them.