I crossed the room, ran the leaves of the wilted spider plant through my fingertips. When I spoke, my voice was cold and harsh. “How would turning me in be the right thing? My career would be over, we’d lose my health insurance, I’d go to jail. You think they’ll promote you to lieutenant after finding out your wife was running an opioid drug ring? And, what, you conveniently never knew? Some detective.” I snorted derisively. “We’d never be able to pay for any of Josh’s treatments. He could die and it would be your fault. That wouldn’t be the right thing!”

Nate’s face had gone an even starker shade of gray. He searched my face, his eyes tortured.

“Emma. Shit!” He collapsed into the couch. “What have you gotten us into?”

Nate’s phone beeped, and he glanced at it. “I don’t suppose you know anything about a girl named Beatrice Flores?”

I tried to place the name.

He held his phone out to me. On the screen was a mug shot of a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with dark hair and patches of lighter skin on her face and hands.

Dread bloomed black and bilious in my stomach.

Beatrice Flores. The girl with vitiligo who’d seen me at the clinic.

“Her body was found this morning in the forest over by the old mill warehouse,” he said.

I could no longer get enough oxygen into my lungs. Pain circled my chest, swirling and unbearable.

I’d told Ben she’d seen me.

I slumped onto the couch next to Nate. A misty veil of tears covered my eyes, turning the fronds of the plant beside me to bony, accusatory fingers. Everything was falling apart. I was losing control of all of it.

How do you defuse a bomb of your own making?

Nate knelt in front of me. “Tell me, Em,” he said urgently. “Tell me what you know. We can get through this. We can still do the right thing.”

I looked into Nate’s eyes and realized what he was offering me. An olive branch. A slim, tenuous branch to grasp onto. One he would use to pull me out of this.

He needed a fall guy. Someone to blame for everything. And I would give it to him.

I leaned forward, my breath hot against his cheek, and whispered one word.

“Ben.”

CHAPTER 38

NATE BACKED AWAY FROM EMMA, his fingers already on his phone.

“What are you going to do?” Emma asked. Her voice was shrill, the sharp pitch of an out-of-tune violin.

The truth was, he didn’t know what he was going to do. He shook his head, twisted the doorknob, but just as he was about to leave she called him back.

“You need to trust me, Nate.”