She pressed her palms against the floor. The wood was smooth, cool, real. She focused on that. On the physical thing that existed outside of the grief threatening to pull her under.
Jenna had to have been scared. Had she heard the killer breaking in? She’d probably called 911—had she called 911? Had she tried?
She died quickly, Mack had said.
That was supposed to help.
It didn’t.
Jenna’s thirtieth birthday was in three weeks. Alyssa had already bought the present—a vintage typewriter Jenna had been obsessing over. It was the kind she’d wanted since college, when she’d declared she was going to write the Great American Novel while teaching second graders how to read.
The typewriter was still in Alyssa’s closet, probably ruined by the fire.
Another sob tore through her. And another. And another.
Time became meaningless. It could have been ten minutes or an hour. She cried until her throat was raw, her eyes burned, and there was nothing left. Until the sobs became hiccups, and her body gave up.
The migraine was there in full force now. A visual aura bloomed at the edges of her vision, nausea rolling through her stomach, the familiar ice-pick pain behind her right eye. She pressed her fingers to the scar. The pain sharpened, but at least it was a pain she understood. A pain she could name.
“Your medication’s on the table.” Mack’s voice. Still calm. Still steady. “Can you stand?”
Could she?
She didn’t know.
She tried. Her legs felt like they belonged to someone else, but they held her weight. Mack’s hand stayed on her elbow—not pulling, not pushing, just there if she needed it.
She made it to the chair and sat. The world tilted but settled.
He set a glass of water in front of her, the pill bottle beside it. She fished one out and swallowed it down.
He pulled his chair next to hers, not uncomfortable with her grief or trying to escape it. He resumed rubbing her back.
The crying had stopped, but random tears tracked down her face without her permission. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. “I should have saved her.” Her voice came out hoarse.
“You tried.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“No.” He didn’t try to argue. Didn’t tell her she’d done her best or that there was nothing more she could have done. “No. It wasn’t enough, and I’m responsible,” he said. “I should have assumed they’d figure out who you were and where you lived. I should have had the FBI pull Jenna out.”
The honesty of it—the refusal to soften what couldn’t be softened—made something in her chest crack open again. She felt the urge to try to relieve his guilt, but what was there to say?
She didn’t know how long they sat there. Long enough for the medication to start working, for the migraine to dull to something survivable. Long enough for the tears to completely stop.
At some point, she realized she was leaning. Not a lot, just her shoulder against his. Her body had given up on holding itself separate and had found the nearest solid thing.
He let her. His arm went around her shoulders.
She should move. Should put distance between them. Remember that she’d forfeited the right to his comfort two years ago when she’d ended things.
But it felt so good. So…right. He’d always felt right. So she didn’t move.
The world beyond the windows was white, silent, and empty. Inside, Alyssa sat at Mack’s kitchen table and tried to learn how to exist in a world where Jenna Lopez no longer did.
Eventually, she found words again. “What do I do now?”
“You do what I tell you, what the FBI tells you.” He didn’t mince words. “There’s a bounty on you for $500,000. A lot of people are going to be looking for you.”