“It sounds like you know what happened.”

“Bill Hollis happened,” I said. But I didn’t know where to go from there. I didn’t want to be the one to tell Chris all the horror that had happened at Tesori Antico. Surely he would learn that when he got back to work. “I’ll give you the cheat-sheet version. Luna got out of juvie. She came after me. Well, they came after us. And we kind of went to them. But anyway, she got away again. She’s disappeared. Nobody’s heard anything from her, that I know of, since that night. But somebody helped her, and it’s a guy I know I’ve seen before. I just can’t figure out who he is or how he fits into this. And his license plate said VP. I’m thinking if we run that plate, maybe it can help us find Luna.”

There was another pause, during which I imagined him trying to arrange everything I’d just said into a picture that made sense. “And then what?”

My voice rose. “And then put her away. Isn’t that still your job?”

“Nikki, I’m not . . .” A long sigh. “Okay. Meet me at the station tomorrow morning. We’ll see what we can find out.”

3

IT DIDN’T MATTER how many times I’d been there; I would always feel like I was being stared at the moment I stepped foot into the police station. Like everyone thought I should be locked up but was slipping by because I had a friend to help me out.

They maybe wouldn’t be too far off from the truth.

The last time I’d been in the station was the night of the Tesori Antico incident, after I’d been told to leave the hospital and go give a statement. I was barely even coherent. Fortunately, Chris had called it in before he’d walked out of the antique shop, so they had a pretty good idea of how all those bodies ended up not breathing inside that store.

What they didn’t understand—and what I couldn’t help them with—was how their officer ended up mangled on the street. They were surprised to hear about the bullet holes in his car. Whatever he’d been mixed up in, he hadn’t even told his colleagues. He’d been doing something off the record, and it had ended up almost killing him. And none of us could help him, as he lay on the operating table getting screws put into his pelvis and getting his collarbone reset.

They hadn’t treated me like a criminal then, but I still felt like one. My hands had held the gun that killed Vanessa Hollis. I had taken a life, and I didn’t know how to feel about that, especially since I mostly felt relief.