It wasn’t working. Her lungs wouldn’t fill.
Her hand moved to her ear to fiddle with her earring—her nervous habit.
But the hole was empty.
The left earring was gone.
More panic raced through her. Where had it fallen out? Had it happened while she was crouched beside Thayer? When she’d bumped into the wall while fleeing?
She looked back at the exit.
She couldn’t go back inside. It was too risky. Vince was still in there, and if he caught her?—
The side door swung open.
Rowan yanked herself flat against the wall, heart slamming against her ribs.
Vince stepped outside. He stood motionless a moment, scanning the lot with the calm, unhurried patience of a man who had nothing to fear.
Then his gaze found her.
Her throat tightened.
He didn’t move. Didn’t call out.
He simply looked at her—the way he sometimes looked at a scene that wasn’t working—calculating, repositioning.
Then he reached into his breast pocket and held something up between two fingers. A clear bag.
Even in the dim light, she recognized the contents of the bag.
The small gold teardrop earring caught the glow from the streetlamp above him.
One corner of his mouth lifted.
He knew she’d been there.
And Rowan knew, without a doubt, that he would frame her for Thayer’s death.
She didn’t know what else to do—so she ran.
CHAPTER 1
Rowan tightenedher grip on the steering wheel as the road stretched empty ahead of her.
She’d lost track of how many hours she’d been driving. How many days, really.
The miles had blurred together somewhere between Arizona and Tennessee, broken only by charging stations, cheap coffee, and a few restless hours of sleep she barely remembered.
Friday night felt both impossibly distant and far too close.
It was now late Monday morning. Back in California, the crew would be arriving on set any time. Makeup artists would be setting up stations. Vince would be barking orders at someone before the sun even came up, like he always did.
And Rowan was on the other side of the country.
By Saturday morning, somewhere outside Albuquerque, she’d finally realized disappearing completely would only make things worse.
So she’d sent a handful of vague texts to her roommate, the production coordinator, and her agent. She’d claimed a personal emergency had come up and she needed a few days away. Nothing specific. Nothing that invited questions. Just enough, she hoped, to buy herself time to think.
