Outside, I jogged toward the only destination that came to mind: the Richmonds’ house.

My stomach sank when I rounded the corner of Cabot Drive and didn’t see Henry’s truck in the driveway. I didn’t know for sure if he’d even made good on his threat to fly home to Wisconsin. But I dashed up the front steps anyway and jammed on the doorbell, winded and frightened that Mischa had already done something irreversible in the fifteen minutes it had taken me to get there.

It felt like an eternity passed before I heard the lock on the door twist from the other side. When the door opened and I saw Henry standing there in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, hair rumpled, I almost cried in relief. “You’re here!”

“What are you doing here?” he asked as he opened the screen door and stepped out onto the stoop. “I thought you were in Florida until the summer.”

“I’m here for Mischa’s parents’ funeral,” I said. I couldn’t get into everything until I was sure no one could hear us. “I’m sorry to come over here unannounced like this, but I need a ride to Violet’s house. It’s urgent.”

Anger simmered in Henry’s eyes at the mere mention of Violet’s name. “Are you serious?”

“Mischa’s over there, and Violet called me in a panic. Mischa might be about to do something crazy.”

“I texted you an hour ago, and you didn’t write back,” he said. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“I’m not mad. I lost my phone,” I told him, wondering what Trey must have thought when he’d seen that text come through from Henry. I’d deal with that guilt later.

Henry calmly ran his hand through his hair and studied me. For a second, my heart flooded with fear that he might tell me that perhaps we should step back and let Mischa do whatever was on her mind. But then he said, “Okay.”

Henry pulled on a pair of jeans, and we hopped into his truck. It felt as if we were driving across town in slow motion even though the peek I stole at Henry’s speedometer revealed that he was driving way over the speed limit. When we arrived at the Simmonses’ property, Henry idled in front of the gate across the private drive leading to Violet’s house. He lowered the driver-side window and pressed the button on the video security panel to announce our arrival.

But no one responded. We didn’t hear a crackle over the intercom signaling that anyone inside the house had activated the system to greet us or open the gate so that we could enter.

“Maybe we’re too late,” I whispered, gazing through the windshield and past the iron stakes of the fence at the peaks of Violet’s mansion in the distance.

Henry shook his head. “We need to get in there. We’ll have to climb over the wall.”

My entire body felt like blocks of ice. “I’ll need a stool or something to stand on. It’s too high.” I already knew from experience that the wall couldn’t be easily scaled. Violet’s grandparents had put quite a bit of thought into keeping intruders off their property. “And there are chunks of glass embedded in the cement along the top. We’ll have to put down a blanket or something, or we’ll both end up needing stitches.”