“Katie.”

“Matt.”

The fifteen-minute drive was mostly in silence, but it was a comfortable silence intermixed with enough conversation for him to learn Katie’s last name, that she liked music and went to private school, and for her to learn his last name was Hudson, he was eighteen, about to graduate from high school and lived with his grandmother.

“So you moved here right before your senior year? Why would you do that? You can just pull over here,” she said as they approached her house. “Don’t go in the driveway unless you want to meet my dad.” She had no doubt her father would be out of the house the moment he saw the unfamiliar car.

Matt pulled his car to the side of the road past her mailbox, staring at her sprawling house in the distance. “You’re rich.” It sounded like an accusation.

“It’s not my fucking fault.”

He looked at her then, and her heart leapt when she saw a flash of respect in his eyes. “You’re right, Hunter.”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Her shyness was overshadowed by her curiosity about him. “Why did you move here before you finished high school?”

“My mom died,” he answered.

4

“How was she?” Lina asked when Phil returned to the bedroom after leaving briefly to check on Katie, who had just arrived home.

“Fine.” He shrugged out of his T-shirt as he crossed to the bed and then he was stretching out on the mattress beside her. He’d been angry after their earlier interchange, but over the course of the evening as they watched a funny movie, Lina nestled on the couch between him and Logan, Phil slowly relaxed, laughing aloud several times, and, by time the credits rolled up the screen, his arm had made its way around Lina’s shoulders, and she was snuggled into his side.

“Did she say anything?”

“Only that her curfew should be twelve thirty instead of twelve.”

“What did you—” The sound of his cell phone vibrating had her pausing midsentence as she watched him get up and move to his bureau. “Who is it?”

“No one.” He silenced the phone and then turned it off altogether before returning to bed.

“It had to be someone.”

“It was a wrong number.”

“How could you possibly know that when you didn’t answer it?”

“I didn’t recognize the number.” As he turned off his bedside lamp, the home phone on the nightstand began to ring. Phil answered it before it rang a second time. “Yes, hello? You have the wrong number, don’t call it again.” He replaced the receiver.

Lina stared at his profile, a sick feeling gripping her stomach. “Was it the same person who called your cell phone?”

“It was a wrong number.”

“So in less than a minute, your cell phone and our home phone received calls by mistake? Why don’t you look at the caller ID and see if it was the same number?”

“Because I don’t care. It was a wrong number.”