On the other side of the room, words were being exchanged between Victor Gutierrez and the man whose company he’d attempted to topple. If it was personal, if he targeted the Ames family because of Ana . . .

“I’ll be back soon,” I told Nick. “Think you can stomach a dance then?”

Campbell responded before Nick could. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered. I wasn’t sure if she’d clued in to what I’d noticed, or if this was just another attempt to get under Nick’s skin.

“No,” I said. Whatever Campbell’s intention was here, I’d never told her the exact words her grandfather had used when he indicated to me that he’d handled Ana. Cam might have had complicated relationships with her parents, but she loved the old man.

I needed to talk to him alone.

“Will you be okay?” I asked Nick, because he still hadn’t replied to anything I’d said, including the question about the dance.

“I’m a big boy.” Nick didn’t even have half a smile for me now. “I can take care of myself.”

Like me, he had probably been born taking care of himself. If you didn’t rely on other people, they couldn’t disappoint you. Hadn’t that been my own mantra, once upon a time?

I’ll make it up to him, I told myself as I started weaving through the crowd toward the Ames and Gutierrez patriarchs.

“You, too, would look excellent in a fedora,” I heard Boone tell Nick behind me.

“Is now a good time for a subject change?” Sadie-Grace asked, in a rare moment of social acuity. I told myself she had the situation in hand, but the last thing I heard as I stepped out of earshot was “Because I think my stepmother might be planning to steal a baby.”

LABOR DAY, 3:25 A.M.

“Let’s play a game. How deep do you think this hole is?”

“That’s not a game, Sadie-Grace.”

“Not with that attitude, it’s not.”

“Seriously?”

“Come on. Please? How deep do you think this hole is?”

“Deep enough that it’s going to be a pain in the ass to climb out—if we even can.”

“Well, I’ve decided I like our chances. Because I’m an optimist, and I’m pretty good at giving boosts.”

TEN WEEKS
(AND TWO DAYS) EARLIER

CHAPTER 17

By the time I reached Davis Ames, Lillian and Victoria’s parents had been swept up in other conversations. Pushing down the urge to look back toward Nick, I wondered what Mr. Gutierrez had said to the Ames family patriarch. Idle chitchat? Not-so-friendly doublespeak? A warning?

“You have the look of a woman on a mission,” Davis told me.

I nodded toward the man I assumed to be Victor Gutierrez. “What did he want?”

“To say hello.”

That was a nonanswer if I’d ever heard one. “What else did he want?”