She also has to pick up the paper. Yes, the actual newspaper, which these days is no longer delivered first thing in the morning. It arrives at some random hour and rarely makes it to her doorstep. Sometimes, it’s on the lawn; other times, on the sidewalk. Tonight, it’s in the gutter. As she steps off the curb, her phone buzzes.
The lab.
It’s late for them, though they’ve been working overtime like everyone else. She opens the email, expecting more bad news. Instead, a surprise.
The L?derach truffles.
When Ivy brought her those half-eaten truffles—the ones Wes had left when he was stalking her—Karen had sent them to the lab. She’d never expected them to do a DNA test. Those are expensive, reserved for the most serious crimes. Stalking usually doesn’t apply.
She was wrong. They not only performed the test; they have the results. Karen opens the report and scrolls to the end to get to the point. She expects to see Wes’s name.
Unknown.
Karen stands in the street, staring at the results, not understanding this at all. They have Wes’s DNA on file, and it should’ve shown as a match in the system. Must be a mistake. Has to be.
She doesn’t look up from her phone until she hears the car speeding down the street. It’s coming right toward her.
By then, it’s too late.
* * *
—
Ivy slams on the brakes.
An instinctual reaction, not one she thought about. It’s something she did when she felt the impact. And saw someone fly into the air after she hit them.
Ivy wasn’t trying to hit anyone; she was trying to get away from that psycho, Milo. If he hadn’t been out at a bar, talking to a woman who wasn’t his fiancée and asking for her number, this never would’ve happened. Milo thought he was going to get away with that, even after cheating before.
When he got caught, he did what men always do: blame the woman.
She looks back at the street.
A woman is lying in the middle of it. Despite the odd angle of her body, Ivy knows exactly who she is.
Karen.
Of all the people to hit, Ivy had to run right into the woman who arrested Wes.
Screwed. Ivy is completely screwed.
What she should do is call 911, just in case Karen is still alive and can be saved. That would be the right thing to do. The human thing. As she picks up her phone, she remembers this is the same woman who tried to take Wes away from her. The one who ruined her wedding. Ruined her life.
Someone shouts. A neighbor rushes out of their house and runs toward Karen.
Ivy hits the gas, speeding away. The neighbors will call 911. Good thing, because she has to get the hell away from this accident.
And it was an accident. She never intended to hurt Karen or anyone else. It never would’ve happened if Milo hadn’t shown up.
Why she ever thought beards were sexy is beyond her.
* * *
—
Ivy drives up to a house made of glass and concrete. Brand-new, in a subdivision called the Next Wave. She can’t go home. Not after that accident. The police are probably still in front of her building in case Wes shows up. When they hear about Karen, they’ll be waiting for her.
She pulls into a driveway alongside the house, hoping her car is obstructed by the huge trees, and runs up to the door. Ivy bangs on it once before it opens.
Heath.
“Ivy, what—”
“Are you here alone?” she says.
“Yes, I am.”
She pushes past him, into the house, down to his great room. The one with white furniture, and windows in place of walls. At least they all face the backyard.
Words explode out of her mouth, a jumbled version of what happened. What she has done. But she’s not too rattled to edit out some of it, like the reason why she was going to talk to Karen.
“I just wanted to know what was happening. If they had any leads in finding—”
“Slow down,” Heath says.
“I can’t slow down. They’re going to be looking for me.” She paces around the room. Lots of space for that. “I hit a cop. A detective.”
“But who were you trying to get away from?”
“This guy was harassing me, and I was trying to get away from him.” She doesn’t go into the whole Milo thing. Doesn’t matter now. “I have to go. They’re going to arrest me, and—”
“Stop. Just stop.” Heath takes her by the shoulders and leads her to the couch. She sits, and he’s right beside her, holding her hand.
Deep breaths. After a couple of them, she nods at Heath. “I’m okay.”
“So you hit Karen?” he says. “The one that arrested Wes?”
“Yes.”
“And you left. Did anyone see you?”
“The neighbors were starting to come out, and I’m sure they saw my car. I don’t know what happened to the guy I was running from. He was about a block away when I took off.”
“But as far as you know,” Heath says, “this guy who was harassing you is the only one who knows you were driving that car.”
Heath’s emphasis on the word driving gets her attention. “That’s true.”
“I think we have to consider the possibility that you didn’t do this.”
“But I—”
“No. You didn’t.”
He looks at her until she gets it. Heath is trying to give her an alternate story, one that doesn’t include her.
“Who was driving?” she says.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiles a little. “Wes.”
“Wes? Why couldn’t it be some random person who stole my car?”
“A random person who just happened to hit the detective that arrested him?”
Good point. The police won’t believe anyone other than her or Wes was driving.
Ivy feels a bit dizzy, like her life is rotating in circles and this might be the biggest. Her second hit-and-run. Both were accidents, and the odds on this happening twice seem impossible, yet here she is.
Wes was arrested for the first one. Now, Heath is suggesting she blame the second on him, as well.
He’s giving her a way out.
74
Bianca rushes to the kitchen, refills her glass with iced tea, nukes a slice of cake so it’s gooey and soft, and runs back to the couch. She makes it just as the commercial break ends.
This running-around thing is new to her, but she’s getting better at it. She usually watches streaming shows and can pause them at will, but she can’t pause live breaking news. Nor does she want to. Bianca doesn’t want to miss a single second of the manhunt for Wes Harmon.
It all started when Wes was arrested for Joey Fisher’s death. Though Bianca knew there was a chance it could happen, it was still shocking. Now she can’t get enough of the story.
But when Wes disappeared, she thought her head might implode.
Within a few hours, the local stations started covering it almost nonstop, and they still are. On one channel, a reporter is standing near Wes’s house. Another has a helicopter in the air and is surveying his whole neighborhood.
Bianca rolls her eyes. Wes isn’t stupid enough to stay in his own neighborhood.
But he may still be in town. If he tried to use a bus, train, or airplane, he would be caught on multiple cameras. On the other hand, he might have had help. No one on the news has mentioned Ivy, or any kind of girlfriend, but the police know about her. Karen certainly does. Ivy or one of his friends could have driven him out of town, to a bus or train station farther away. Or maybe just to hide somewhere.