“Yeah, I think I should.”
Abby nodded.
Things played out at Abby’s apartment the way that her best friend said they would. Wine then bath. Ivy had even fallen asleep in the tub for a few minutes. When she got out, Abs was waiting for her. Refilled her glass.
“I need to go back to work for half an hour, okay? Still have Mrs.Brighton there waiting to get her lips done. Boss is pissed that I keep leaving during the middle of the workday. Then I’m coming straight home—took tomorrow off, too. We can just hang out. Take it easy.”
Abby was rambling, clearly felt bad about everything that Ivy had been through. Ivy felt worse for getting her friend embroiled in another hot mess.
“It’s okay—go.”
Abby nodded.
“Lock the door behind me.”
“I will.”
“No, Ivy. Come with me. If that kid has a partner like the cops said...”
“Just go, Abs.”
Abby’s eyes drifted to the towel Ivy had wrapped herself in.
“Borrow something of mine to wear,” Abby said. She opened the front door. Paused. “No going anywhere, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Pinky.”
Abby hugged her. Ivy’s towel slipped; she adjusted it.
“Love you, bitch.”
“Love you, too.”
Ivy locked the door and immediately went to her friend’s computer to search for the spam email with the cryptic poem.
“What the fuck?”
It was gone.
Not in her trash folder, not anywhere. Ivy spent a good twenty minutes Googling how to recover deleted emails, but to no avail.
Her eyes blurred and she nearly fell asleep. Decided that if she stayed in front of her computer any longer, she would pass out. Almost convinced herself that she’d just made the whole thing up. She desperately needed to rest. Planned to crawl into Abby’s bed and wake up in a week to the news that Vaughn had caught the man who had torn her life apart. Then she would see the therapist and start the long road to piecing her life back together, to going back to how things were before all this death and mayhem began.
But that never happened.
Ivy had promised not to leave the house and never intended to lie to her friend. But when she heard that familiar ring from her cell—beep, beep... beep—Ivy knew she’d done just that.?
?Chapter 66
“What the hellis wrong with you, Darnell?”
Captain Daniels had already chewed the detective out for the way he’d handled the interview. Went as far as to pull him from the presser.
The room that Ivy had been in didn’t have an adjacent viewing area behind one-way glass, but Vaughn had been close enough to the door to hear almost everything.
