I watch him move unsteadily across the parking lot, his hair uncharacteristically flat on one side of his head. He couldn’t have slept well last night. Alex didn’t get in until long past midnight, and she was gone again by seven a.m. She hasn’t replied to a single text message. Chase pulls open the bus depot door and disappears inside. I wait, my hands shaking. Is Eli actually in there, or is he watching this car? Any minute now, will he yank open the passenger door and pull me out by my hair? I try to take a calming breath and stretch out my legs, but my belly is so heavy, it’s a sackful of sand on my lap. And there’s that spike of pain again, making me gasp, as if overnight my baby has grown sharp metallic edges inside me.

“It’s okay,” I mutter, rubbing one hand over my stomach, clutching my bag with the tin in the other. “We’re going to be fine.”

Two achingly long minutes go by while I crane my neck and peer through the windshield at the front entrance. But when the doors open and Eli comes out, it’s not Chase he’s with. My heart drops. There’s Eli, fifty feet away, baggy jeans, white skateboard sneakers, his elbows sandwiched between two police officers who are escorting him to a parked cruiser at the far end of the lot.

“Oh my God,” I say out loud. Where the hell is Chase? The pain in my pelvis begins to drag now as if everything inside me is suctioning downward. But then the bus depot door flies open again, and Chase comes hurrying out, tripping a little on the front curve of his flip-flop. He’s ten steps across the asphalt, eyes big as dinner plates, when out of the building emerges Sully Mills.

Chase is coming my way. I open the door for him. “I walked right into him!” he hisses as he throws himself into the driver’s seat.

“Go!” I shout. “Just drive away!”

“Hide that.” Chase motions to my bag and I kick it to the floor as he fumbles with his seat belt. But Sully has arrived at the driver’s side window and is motioning for us to lower the window. Chase presses the button, and Sully bends and looks in.

“Hi,” Sully says.

“Yep,” says Chase.

“Mr. Kennedy, I’m Officer—”

“I know exactly who you are,” Chase says.

Sully bends lower. “Ms. Van Ness. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.” I try to ease the bag closed by my foot, without looking down, but the fabric is floppy, and I don’t know if I’ve managed it. Inside my chest, my heartbeat is frantic.