“Jesus, Lawrence, do you think it’s possible it wasn’t Bullock who tried to kill you that night in your apartment? I mean, Bullock said he didn’t do it, but at the time I didn’t think a denial from him meant much, but he wasn’t afraid to admit killing Stan, or …”

“Or what?” Lawrence said.

And I thought: Angie’s with him. She’s with him right now. She’s with the guy who attacked Lawrence and left him for dead.

“He tells me, if he’s not with me, he won’t ever be with anyone. It was like he wanted to add I wouldn’t ever be with anyone else either.”

Chapter 39

39

I dropped the phone and flew out the front door and down the steps of the porch. Sarah and Paul were standing in the driveway, the last of our guests gone, Paul making some derisive comments about the Virtue.

I must have appeared pretty alarmed, because Sarah, at the sight of me, looked horrified. “What?” she said.

“Which way did Angie and Trevor go?”

Paul pointed south. “That way,” he said. “What’s going on?”

I was running. Both Sarah and Paul were starting after me, and I shouted back to Sarah, “Call the police!” Sarah, bless her, didn’t ask questions, but ran straight into the house as Paul hung in with me.

We went past Trevor’s black Chevy, parked at the curb, Morpheus’s snout sticking out the half-rolled-down window. He jammed his entire head out, slobber dripping from his jowls, the sudden commotion of us running by sending him into a barking fit. He snapped at me and Paul as we ran by, scratched frantically at the windows with his long-nailed paws.

My eyes followed the sidewalk all the way down to the busy cross street, and there was no sign of either of them. I hadn’t gone all that far before I started feeling winded, but I wasn’t slowing down. Paul was keeping pace, and could easily have outrun me, but he didn’t know what, exactly, the mission was.

“What is it, Dad?” he asked.

“It’s Trevor,” I said, my arms and legs pumping.

“What about him?”

“It’s him. He’s the one who tried to kill Lawrence Jones.”

You could see it in his face, the flash of betrayal, how he’d accepted favors from someone who now presented a very real threat to our family.

“I’ll bet they’re at one of the cafés,” Paul said, and started to pull away from me. He got to the corner about ten seconds before I did, standing there, looking both ways, hoping for a glimpse of either of them. Not only was Paul younger and faster than I, but he had better eyesight, too. If anyone could spot Angie and Trevor, it would be him.

“There!” he said to me. “Come on!”