And I felt powerless to do or say anything. Blake wasn’t my friend. He wasn’t anything to me anymore.

But did I want to watch him die? And take others down with him?

For a suspended moment, the vehicles faced each other, cops on one side and Blake and Sam on the other. No one made a move.

Through the windshield I saw Sam waving her arms around, urging Blake to do something. She seemed to be pleading.

Then the driver’s-side window of the SUV came down, and Blake’s arm came out. Sam was shaking her head. The sleeve of his suit and the crisp white cuff. Something metallic dangled from his fingers. He dropped the keys onto the driveway. And his hands came out the window in surrender.

Two cops emerged from their vehicles, hands near their weapons. They moved slowly toward Sam’s car, like soldiers on patrol, and then ordered the two of them to step outside.

One cop went to each side of the SUV, and when Blake and Sam came out, the cops took them and moved them up against the car. It took me back to my own experience outside their duplex when the cops pushed me up against the siding and searched me.

Except it hadn’t happened to me in my wedding suit.

The cops patted them down and placed cuffs on them. For attempting to flee the scene . . . and then everything that they would now be able to prove.

Despite my desire to be done with Blake forever, I felt bad for them. Embarrassed.

Although I shouldn’t have. They’d both done horrible things and had finally been caught.

That was when Amanda let go of my hand and nudged me.

“Are you seeing this, Ryan?”

I thought she meant the arrest. How could I not? But then I followed her gaze and saw what she meant.

The wedding guests, who had been sitting inside patiently waiting for the ceremony to start, had come out of the Barn, and they stood fanned out across the lawn. They all gawked at the spectacle happening before them.

And most of them, almost all of them, held their phones up before their faces, filming and taking photos of Blake and Sam being led over to and then placed into the back of a police cruiser in their wedding clothes. A cop placing his hand on Sam’s perfectly styled hair to make sure she didn’t hit her head as he maneuvered her in.

No one stepped forward to offer help. No one said anything.

They filmed and photographed. And looked happy to be doing it.

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

It took hours to untangle things with the police.

Both Amanda and I had to go in and meet with Rountree and a team of assorted detectives and attorneys we’d never met before. We told our stories separately, over and over again.