Abigail shifts her weight, appearing to change her mind about trying to get out of the room. Her tone switches to something more friendly. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
“Why don’t you tell me why you talked to the police?”
Her eyes widen, becoming so large it reminds him of a cartoon. “I had to.”
“You need to explain that.”
“They came to me,” she says.
Some truth in that, probably. Karen must have tracked her down; he had assumed as much. But she didn’t have to talk. Didn’t have to betray him.
Didn’t have to lie.
Seven years of history between them. Seven years that included countless work problems, celebrations, holiday parties, a few personal conversations. And one night in bed.
Yes, they had told each other things, had confided in each other. He knew about a guy who broke her heart, and she knew about Ivy. Given their positions, the night they’d spent together was wrong. But if he put that aside, along with the uncomfortable days at the office afterward, they had been friends. Abigail wasn’t a problem until she decided to become his biggest one.
“Let’s go sit down and talk this through,” Abigail says. She gestures to the hall, toward the living room.
“You want to sit? Then sit.” He points to the bed. He grabs a chair from her vanity table, places it in front of the door, and takes a seat.
She perches herself on the edge of the bed, close to him, and crosses her legs.
“Before you were arrested, a detective came to see me,” Abigail says. “She showed up late one night to talk about you. I played stupid, obviously. I didn’t tell her anything about us.”
Wes narrows his eyes. He didn’t mean to. It’s a subconscious reaction to hearing her excuses.
“I’m not lying,” she says. “After you were arrested, they came to Siphon with a warrant to search your office.”
He holds up a hand. “Hold on. Didn’t you skip a few steps? Maybe another conversation with the police?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Answering a question with a question is not inspiring my confidence.”
Her laugh sounds like a snort. “Is that what they teach you in the sales training?”
Wes doesn’t answer. She is still avoiding the question.
Abigail edges forward on the bed, getting a little closer to him. “I don’t understand what you think I did.”
“There’s a witness who heard a fight between Ivy and me at Siphon. We had one argument at the office. Only you and Tanner were there,” he says. “And Tanner’s dead.”
“Sure, I told them about that. Karen asked if I’d ever seen you two argue, and I told her about the day Ivy lost her mind at the office.”
He winces a little at her description. Accurate, though. “Except here’s the problem,” he says, being careful not to admit or deny anything. “Neither Ivy nor I ever brought up a car accident or Joey Fisher.”
Abigail doesn’t react to that.
“But the witness claims we did,” he says.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Here’s the best part,” he says. “The witness also said Ivy blamed me for the accident.”
She shrugs. “And?”
“And it’s wrong. Ivy wouldn’t say that. Ever.”
Abigail looks confused, and he watches as she tries to work it through in her mind. It seems to take too long, like she’s stalling for some other reason.
“So if it wasn’t you that lied, who was it?” he says. “You know everything that happens at Siphon.”
Before she can answer, the phone in his hand buzzes. Her phone. The name of the caller is surprising.
Bianca.
Abigail moves. She’s so fast he doesn’t realize what she’s doing. By the time he lunges forward, trying to stop her, she has already reached into her gym bag and pulled something out.
A gun.
She stands up, pointing it at him, and she looks very pissed off.
Wes mentally kicks himself for coming to her house. He should have known better than to mess with Abigail. The gorgeous ones are always high-maintenance.
“Abigail, there’s no need to—”
“You come into my house,” she says, “and threaten me?”
“I never threatened—”
“You have a baseball bat.”
“That’s yours,” he says. “I took it so you couldn’t use it on me. I didn’t know you had a gun.”
“It’s a dangerous world out there. A girl’s got to protect herself.”
Wes takes a beat, then tries pleading with her. “Abigail, I’m trying to figure out why you would lie to the police about me. I thought . . .” He lowers his hands a little, trying to appear nonthreatening. “I thought we were cool. That we understood each other.”
She smiles. “Did you, now?”
“If it wasn’t you that lied to the police, then you must know who it was. You know everything that happens at Siphon.”
Her phone buzzes again. It’s on the floor now, dropped when he moved toward her. Bianca has left a message.
“Is it her?” he says. “Bianca?”
Abigail sighs. Her shoulders slump, and she looks exhausted. “Oh, Wes. You are so stupid.”
* * *
—
Ivy sits in her car on Nightingale Lane, parked down the block from Karen’s house. She wants to talk to Karen but isn’t sure what to say. What she needs is a plan, but plans are Wes’s thing, not hers. Ivy has other strengths, one of which stands out.
Shuōhuǎng.
Lying. She is exceptional at that.
While waiting for Karen to get home, Ivy invents a story in her head. She should’ve thought of this before. All Ivy needs to do is talk to her.
Not to confess, though. That may have been the right thing to do before, but now that Wes is gone all it would do is land her in jail. What Ivy needs to do now is tell Karen what she wants to hear. To pretend she is trying to help.
She’ll say Wes contacted her. He called her at work on the main office line. That would make it impossible for the police to track down the number, since he has never called her office with his new phone. Ivy will say Wes refused to tell her where he is, only saying that he was far away from Fair Valley.
Wait, no. Ivy should give Karen a direction, a place she knows Wes won’t go.
A list of possibilities runs through her mind until she realizes he could go anywhere except one place: Michigan.
Wes wouldn’t go back home. He would shrivel up in shame if the police busted down his parents’ door to look for him. He wouldn’t go to his sister, either. Not yet, anyway. He knows the police will talk to her, the same way they talked to Ivy and everyone else he knows.
But she could say he’s somewhere in the Upper Peninsula, a largely rural area he’s familiar with, or at least she could claim he is, and he is hiding out in . . . a cabin. Yes. A hunting or fishing cabin—she isn’t sure which. Not like he would give her the coordinates of it.
The questions will come next. Karen will ask why Ivy is coming to her with this information.
Ivy gets out of the car, stretching her legs and walking around the wooded green space next to where she’d parked. The pacing helps her think. It’s dark, without many lights, so Karen wouldn’t be able to see her face if she drove down the street.