“Yes, that’s my ex-boyfriend.” She muffled the phone again. “Oh my god, he’s asking about Kev.”

“Chloe, tell me Kevin’s last name,” I said.

“Driscoll,” she replied. “Is he in trouble?”

“Driscoll? Kevin Driscoll?” I turned toward the car. Saw Linda and Sharon exchanging a look with each other. “Can you spell that? D-R-I-S-C-O-L-L? Chloe, how old is Kevin?”

I reached for the handle of the open back passenger door but it shut before I could grab it. Linda had pulled it closed from the inside. I watched him shut his own door, glancing at me, emotionless. I reached for the handle again but the car was moving. They sped off without me.

“Hey!” I ran a few paces after the car. “Hey!”

I stood by the side of the road, confused, the phone hanging in my hand. All of a sudden, the road had emptied of cars. I could see an intersection in the distance. I started running, putting the phone back to my ear.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I huffed.

“He’s twenty-five,” Chloe said. “No, he’d be twenty-six now. Is he in trouble?”

“Do you know where he lives now?”

“No, I … We broke up.”

A flash across my mind, the girl in the picture, Kevin holding the phone, looking down at her like there was no one else in the world. Something in me had stirred, some primal recognition of the danger of this man, of the ruin he had wreaked on my life, on Claire’s life, on Dale’s life. I’d sensed his badness. His hand on my fate. And now all I could think of was that little girl in the picture in his hand, the face in his fingers. She’d looked so much like Claire. Jesus. She’d looked like her twin.

You’re a true inspiration.

Having met you I feel kind of free.

Free to do what?

“Where do his parents live?” I asked Chloe.

“His parents?” The girl laughed nervously. “Is this a joke?”

“His sister. Kevin’s sister. The little blond girl. He showed me a picture on his phone.”

There was a long pause. I got to the intersection, waved madly at a taxi. It sailed past me.

“Kevin doesn’t have a sister,” Chloe said.

Amanda’s plan had worked. Stupid boys. Prison boys, still strung out on the incredible bravado they’d had to display on the inside, a door opened on a world of animalistic instinct that they could never close again. Jay had ripped off the duct tape on her wrists. Amanda waited for a pause in the punches raining down on her before throwing herself upward and wrapping her arms around him, entangling him like a snake. She bit. Her nails tearing into his shoulders. Her heels digging into his legs. Her teeth biting into the tender flesh at the side of his head. She got what she was aiming for. The warm, salty, hard flesh of his ear. Her own ear thumped with the pitch of his scream. When he tried to pull away, she gripped on harder, followed, let him drag her with him. They rolled together like lovers, and when she was on top Amanda rose up and balled her fist, brought it down hard on his nose. The bone crunched.