“I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“She’s not supposed to be arrested until tomorrow. Go ask. Call it in, or whatever. They’ll tell you,” JJ said.
“Step out of the car, Emma,” Hadley told her.
“You can’t arrest her. You don’t have the authority,” JJ insisted.
“I’m sure we can sort that out with a quick chat, but in the meantime, Emma is going to step out of the vehicle.” Hadley’s tone was almost cheerful.
“You can’t—” JJ started, but Emma put a hand on her arm. Her fear was still wrapped around her throat, but she knew there was nothing to do.
“Call Chris.” She handed JJ her phone. She unbuckled and opened the side door.
Hadley beckoned her to approach the back of the car. She kept her hands loose at her sides, focusing everything she had on taking one breath and then another, and walked to join him. He waited for her to catch up and then put a hand on her arm. “Let’s have a little chat,” he said. He kept her walking all the way back to his car, and she didn’t protest.
“What is this really about?” she asked him when he stopped. His hands on his hips, he looked at her inscrutably. “What do you want, Uncle Rick?”
“I want you to stop playing games,” he said. He didn’t sound cheerful anymore. His voice was low and dangerous.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve been playing dumb for fourteen years,” he said. Emma’s hands shook. She balled them into fists to keep them still. “Pretending you didn’t know what happened that night. Pretending you had nothing to do with it.”
“I didn’t,” Emma said. She gave him a hard look. “Did you know what Dad was doing? About the robberies?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“I think Ellis knew. And I think Nathan told him exactly what he found, and what was on that flash drive,” Emma said, aware that she wasn’t explaining herself properly. She watched Hadley carefully. Her father’s best friend. Ellis’s second-in-command. Was it possible he didn’t know? “He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he could trust the police, and now he’s dead, just like Kenneth Mahoney.”
“Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” Hadley said. He paused, as if considering long and hard. His thumbnail scraped along his jaw. “All right. Let’s say you’re right. Where is this flash drive?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said, frustrated, and then she noticed the intensity in his voice. The spark of paranoia in his eye. She backed away half a step. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
Hadley took a step toward her. She fell back on instinct, but he grabbed her arm, wrenching her toward him, and Emma realized she’d made a mistake. A terrible one.
“Tell me where the flash drive is, and we can clear this all up,” he said. JJ’s car door opened. She stepped out, but didn’t approach. “Tell me, or I will shoot you in the fucking head and tell them you reached for my gun. You already killed your parents and your husband. You think they won’t believe me?”
“I don’t have it,” Emma said. And neither did he.
“Emma—” he began.
Tires squealed, and JJ’s car reversed—barreling toward them.
49
JJ
Now
JJ sat in the car, her knee bouncing with nervous, jangly energy. She watched Emma and Hadley walk toward the SUV. He couldn’t just arrest her, could he?
Chris. She was supposed to call Chris.
She looked at Emma’s phone and realized it was locked. Did she even have Chris’s number on hers?
The screen lit up. She was about to ignore the call when she saw the local area code. Something made her stop. She answered. Held the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
A pause. “Juliette?”
“Logan. What the hell are you doing calling my sister?” she asked.
“I was actually trying to reach you,” he said. “I didn’t have your number. Look, I felt bad about the way things went when we talked. It freaked me out, that’s all. And I’m not repeating this to anyone who could vaguely be construed as an authority figure, okay?”
“What are you talking about, Logan?” JJ asked. What were Hadley and Emma doing? She popped open the door and stepped out, keeping the phone to her ear.
“The gun. My gun,” Logan said. “I promise you, you didn’t have it that night. Neither did I. I hadn’t had it for a couple of months.”
“Who had it?” JJ asked. She watched as Emma stepped back, and back again. As Hadley reached for her.
“I got caught with it. He took it off me, let me go with a warning.”
“Logan. Who took it?” JJ asked, urgency in her voice.
“Rick Hadley.”
Hadley had the gun.
Red hand.
She could almost remember pulling the trigger.
Almost.
But she couldn’t have had the gun that night, could she? Not if Hadley had taken it. If the gun had been at the house that night, so had he.
JJ threw herself back into the seat, barely closing the door before she threw it into reverse.
Hadley spun as JJ accelerated. He stood frozen, staring as if he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Emma scrambled back away from him. At the last second he tried to throw himself out of the path of the car, but it clipped his hip. Not enough to do real damage at that speed, but it sent him sprawling, right against the hood of his own car. There was a crack as his head connected, and he fell to his hands and knees. He grabbed the side of his head, dazed.
“Juliette, what—” Emma started.
“Just get in!” JJ screamed at her, leaning over to throw open the door, and Emma leaped inside. JJ rammed the car into drive and floored the gas pedal, her blood roaring in her ears.
“What are you doing?” Emma demanded, finishing her thought. She turned in her seat. JJ looked in the rearview mirror to see Hadley getting up slowly, one hand braced on the hood of his car. Then the road bent, and he was out of sight.
“Hadley had the gun. Hadley had the fucking gun,” JJ said. Yellow wallpaper. White grip. Red hand. But Rick Hadley had the gun, and she’d been wrong. She hadn’t done it. It wasn’t her, and relief and fear knotted together inside her.
She barely braked as she threw them around a hard turn, tires skidding along the dirt at the edge of the road. Emma was thrown against the door. She fumbled for her seat belt. JJ yanked the wheel, taking the final turn before the bridge.
“JJ, we’re going too—” Emma said at the same moment that JJ realized where they were, how stupidly fast they were going. But it was too late.
They careened around the corner. The road kinked to the right. They kept going straight. JJ slammed on the brakes. The car jolted over the edge of the road, slammed into the already-broken guardrail with a sound of protesting metal, and then they were shooting over the edge of the drop-off, into the water below.
* * *
They were in the water. JJ must have blacked out for a moment when they hit because she woke with a mouthful of river water and Emma shouting her name.
The car had careened over the bank and jammed against a rock, with the passenger side sticking up out of the water. Emma was bracing herself in her seat, her seat belt wrapped around one arm, or she would have fallen. Water flowed over JJ’s mouth and nose, choking her. She arched wildly, trying to get above it to take a breath—
“JJ! Your seat belt. Get your seat belt off,” Emma said, sounding strangely calm. JJ scrabbled for the release. Then she was free, and shoving herself up above the water level, gasping. Emma crouched on her seat, eyes bright but steady.
“You okay?” JJ managed, coughing.