“Oh my God.” Ivy freezes the screen, like that’ll do something to slow the train wreck headed her way. “He said my name. On television. I am so screwed.” Her eyes dart wildly around her living room. “I can fix this. I have to fix this.” Then she flings the remote onto the couch, drops into a chair, and covers her face with her hands. “I have to fix this,” she repeats, voice muffled.
Mateo and I exchange glances. “How many people even watch cable news, though?” I say. Nobody answers me, which is probably just as well, since I have no idea and it might be a lot. Mateo puts a hand on Ivy’s shoulder and leans down, murmuring something in her ear that I can’t hear. She doesn’t move a muscle.
“Damn, that was messed up,” Charlie says, sounding almost sympathetic. “Except for Emily. She’s your ride or die, huh?”
Ivy doesn’t respond, and her misery tugs at my conscience. All day, she’s been trying to piece together the truth. And I’ve been either getting in her way, or staying so far out of it that I’m no help at all. Because I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. I’m still not, but I can’t just stand around while her life falls apart, either.
“Charlie,” I say, turning toward the couch. While Ivy and Mateo were in the bathroom, I was so focused on pulling the drug story out of Charlie that I barely had the chance to ask him anything else. “When I answered Boney’s phone, you said, Did the guy show up? Who were you talking about?”
“A buyer,” Charlie says. He steeples his fingers and places them under his chin, forehead creased, like he’s making a mighty effort to concentrate. “Some dude called over the weekend about meeting up in Boston for a big order. We all have burner phones, and this one came through Boney’s. He wanted, like, twenty times as much as we usually sell. Boney was psyched, but Autumn freaked out.”
Mateo blanches. “Well, yeah. That’s way too much.”
“But Boney went anyway?” I ask.
Way to state the obvious, Cal. Really moving things along.
“He promised Autumn he wouldn’t,” Charlie says. “But then last night, he told me he’d talked to the guy again and decided to go. He said not to tell Autumn, because she’d just”—he puts up finger quotes—“hold us back. He said she’s small-time, and we could be big-time.”
“Big-time?” I ask, alarmed. “What does that mean?”
Charlie lifts a shoulder. “Not sure. He didn’t want to get into it over the phone. He said he’d explain everything once he made the connection.”
“The connection?” I echo. “With who? The guy with the giant order?”
“I guess?” Charlie turns his palms up in a helpless gesture.
“Do you know why he went to that specific building?” I ask. “Was that Boney’s idea, or the guy he was meeting?”
“The guy,” Charlie says. “He gave Boney the address and a code for the door.”
I rock on my heels. “Do you have any idea who this guy is?”
“None,” Charlie says, sinking lower in the couch. “I felt weird about it this morning, like maybe we should listen to Autumn. If she thinks something’s a bad idea, then it probably is. I tried calling her, to ask if we should stop him, but she didn’t pick up either of her phones. So I just—let it go.” His head droops as he makes a fist and bounces it hard against the armrest of the couch. “Fucking hell. I shouldn’t have let it go.”
Silence falls as we get lost in our own regrets. I wish, obviously, that I hadn’t led Mateo and Ivy to the studio this morning. But more than that, I wish I’d pushed Lara harder for answers when I had the chance. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to decide she must be blameless. Because it’s getting more and more impossible to believe that she is.
“Hey, Charlie.” Mateo finally breaks the silence, taking out his phone and swiping the screen a few times. “I haven’t heard from Autumn all day. Have you?” His voice is tight with worry. “Does she know what happened to Boney?”
“I don’t think so,” Charlie says. “She never called me back. You know how it is when she’s driving the murder van.”
Before I can react to that, Ivy’s head snaps up. “The what?” she asks, surprisingly alert for someone who was near comatose last time I checked. Mateo, looking relieved at the sign of life, lightly squeezes her shoulder. “There’s a murder van?” Ivy repeats, glaring accusingly at Charlie. “Just what kind of drug business are you guys running?”