Steve squints at Joey. “And if you simply don’t dial the code when they send it to you?”

“If I don’t dial it, they kill me too,” says Joey. Just as plainly.

But you’re going to die when you dial it anyway. Zack keeps the thought to himself. He knows it’s one they all share.

Steve carefully lines up the back cover of the phone and presses it together. Zack reaches out to take it from Steve, to hand back to Joey.

“If you could somehow find the bomb and set it off safely…beforehand…away from its target…”

But Zack knows—they all must know—that’s just a fantasy.

“Of course, you’d have to know the code.” Steve looks at Zack. A shrug, a grim smile. “Hey, you did it before, Zack. With a passcode. With a prison ID. Maybe somehow you can figure this number out too.”

Knowing, as they all do, that’s pretty much impossible.

Joey opens the door to leave Steve’s apartment.

Emily is standing there.

She looks at Joey. At Zack.

Her whole body is shuddering. She shakes her head slowly side to side. Incredulity. Disappointment. Finality. All in that headshake.

She turns and lurches down the stairs.

Zack lurches after her.

He catches up with Emily on the street outside. Grabs her arm.

She shakes it away. “You lied to me, didn’t you!” she says. “You lied to me and texted him back and got together with him. And you brought him to Steve’s! How could you? What’s wrong with you?”

“Emily, I—”

“You weren’t working extra shifts at the GreenGirl. One more lie!”

She must have gone to the GreenGirl to meet him, and surprise, he wasn’t there, and instead of sending him a text or calling him, she must have thought it was an emergency of some sort, which she knew was likely to somehow involve Steve, so she’d come straight here.

“You showed me how you erased the text from him. You showed me your phone. Another lie. Your lie phone.”

There is nothing he can say. He feels the street, the world, spinning around him faster…

“You weren’t here helping Steve. You were here helping Joey. Helping a killer! Setting Steve back, I’m sure. Terrifying Steve…” Emily is shaking her head vigorously, as if to shake him out of her view. “You’re crazy, Zack. Stupid crazy. And you knew you were risking our relationship, risking everything we had, and that’s why you wouldn’t tell me anything, but you went ahead and did it anyway. Which shows how much you care about this relationship. About us.”

She looks at him, hard-eyed. “You knew it was Joey or me. And you chose Joey.”

She turns away. “Don’t come back to the apartment. Ever. We’re done.”

Her arm goes up for a cab. “Stay with Joey. Your friend Joey Richter.”