Abby placed Tristan’s laptop on the table, swapped it for the beer. Collapsed in a chair.
“Weird how it’s easier to break into a crime scene than to gain access to a private residence, huh? I mean, breaking into Tristan’s house was easy enough, but he had this pantry. It was locked up like Fort Knox.”
Ivy stared at the laptop.
“You didn’t say anything about a locked pantry,” she muttered absently.
“I know. I was planning on going back—with more time, I probably would have gotten in. And I thought the laptop was in there. It had to be. I wanted to surprise you. Guess I was wrong. But, hey, it’s here now. It’s all yours.”
Ivy’s thoughts drowned out her friend completely now.
Three years. Threelongyears.
First, searching the house, causing severe burns in her throat for the effort. Forever scarring her fingers. Then reviewing everything the cops had pulled from the rubble. Having Abby break into Tristan’s dorm. Steve’s old office.
It wasn’t there.
For three years, Ivy had been looking for the laptop. And when she’d found out that Steve had a son—which her father had never mentioned before—she’d gone as far as to ensure Tristan was hired as her TA with the hope of getting closer. But while she’d been searching for Steve’s laptop, Ivy had had no idea that Tristan was looking for Gene’s.
And his approach had been more... visceral. Visceral and desperate.
She should have known. Should have seen the pattern.
Steve had killed for the laptop; Tristan had done the same.
Like father, like son.
So much death...
That had never been part of the plan. Ivy wanted to find the laptop to prevent any more deaths.
“What are you going to do with you know who?” Abby asked, her eyes flicking upward. “He’s not your responsibility.”
He never was, not really.
Despite the rather simple way Vaughn had framed her relationship with her surrogate father, Ivy knew that what she had with Steve was more complex.
Vaughn didn’t understand the math. Didn’t know the true value of their work, the value of the solution to the Riemann hypothesis. He didn’t know how hard things had been for her.
One day, she was a math protégée, daughter to one of the most brilliant minds the country had seen in decades.
The next, everything had been ripped from her grasp. Adopting Steve had been the only thing that had kept her sane. The only person who could understand her problems, her questions, even though he could never answer her.
“I know,” she said simply.
Abs knew better than to press.
“By the way, they finally took that TikTok video down,” her friend said as she continued to drink her beer.
Ivy had forgotten all about it.
A video of her, taken by Zeke’s cell phone but orchestrated by Tristan. He’d planted the seed of the lecture in her mind, knowing that the cops would eventually need help with the crime scene. Paid to boost the video so that her name came to the top of every search list.
Too many variables for her liking, too many unknowns, but it had worked out for Tristan.
Until it hadn’t.
Ivy pictured him lying on the blood-spattered Queen Anne’s lace.
