“Yes, of course,” he said, impatient now. “Santiago knew too much, and Beatrice was going to the police. You should thank Gabe and me for stopping her.”

He knelt next to me, his face softening. “Look, it was just business. I’m not some crazy drug lord who goes out of his way to hurt people.”

“Why?” I whispered.

“You can thank Ben, actually. He wanted me to sign a prescription for him. He was high, jonesing for another pill. He had some… delicate information on me. So I did. He kept coming back, so I suggested a partnership. I figured we might as well both make money from our mutual misfortune. He likes drugs, and I like money.”

Pain rocketed throughout my body in hot, bloody waves. Darkness danced around my peripheral vision. I wanted to lie down, to melt into the cold, damp floor where Nate had died and join him. I glanced at my hands, still gripping the wound. The freezing temperature had slowed the blood flow. A warm numbness was settling over me now.

But there was Josh. Always Josh

“Ben had information on you?” I asked.

“Remember this?” He lifted his palm, exposing a long white scar slicing from pinkie to thumb.

I nodded. He’d gotten it when he’d bent to lift me up the night my parents died, accidentally pressing his hand into a piece of glass on the road.

“Ben read the accident report and knew there was no glass where I found you. You’d pulled your dad away from the car. He guessed I’d been there earlier, and he was right. I cut myself when I was trying to get you out of the car.”

A memory of the accident that had killed my parents rose from a dark pocket of my mind, bobbing like a bottle adrift in the ocean.

… The sound of footsteps crunching on gravel. Knocking on glass. A tug on the door handle. “Hello? Hello?” And then a growl of pain: “Ahhh!…”

“You were there.”

He smiled sadly and nodded, pushing a strand of hair off my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I don’t suppose it makes it any better, but it truly was an accident. I’d had far too much to drink. Like your dad, it turns out. He was going too fast to stop when I pulled out of the intersection. He overcorrected, and the car flipped off the embankment at the side of the road.”

“Why didn’t you get help?” A solitary tear rolled slowly down my cheek. “My dad could’ve lived.”