The black SUV pulls out of the parking spot, the red and blue police lights reflecting off the beige interior, the pattern turning everything purple if I don’t pay attention.

What feels like hundreds of emergency vehicles and media satellite vans surround us, the crime scene sadly familiar. Yet again, Silas has to explain my position in this mess. Yet again, he’s my alibi. Yet again, a friend of mine has been killed under suspicious circumstances.

Yet again, I’m being set up.

Pressure builds behind my eyes, the bridge of my nose expanding. My brain feels like it’s swelling inside my skull. My body reacts in all the “normal” ways it is supposed to respond to trauma. I shake. I throw up. I ache. Processing the images of Mandy’s broken body takes all the energy I’m capable of producing, and then some.

There is a breaking point. Bodies aren’t designed to experience never-ending, unpredictable threats like this.

I’m literally in combat.

Except this isn’t a war zone.

It’s my life.

Duff drives us on roads I don’t recognize, the endless blur of color and motion outside the windows no longer lulling. Nothing can calm me down. Covert and overt looks from Silas tell me he’s worried, on edge, and angry.

He should be.

He was right.

My mouth opens to say something, but the words don’t come. What can I say? Every step of the way, he’s been right. Tara is dead. Mandy is dead.

I am supposed to be dead.

“Airport,” he instructs Duff, who takes a sudden left turn. I’m sure we’re going to Alice’s.

I don’t even ask.

We zoom right down the block where the flower shop is located. A glint of green metal from the same van Lily drove me in catches my eye.

“We need to stop,” I say, hand already on the door.

“Why?”

“I, uh, need to use the bathroom,” I lie, pointing to The Thorn Poke.

Silas’s side-eye barely registers. “You mean you want to see your partner in crime.”

“Lily did nothing wrong.”

He ignores my words but nods to Duff, who eases the SUV into a parking spot right behind the store. “You can go in, but one of us is with you the entire time.”

“What a nice change.”

“Don’t even test me, Jane. For God’s sake, what you just did put yourself in jeopardy. It gave the enemy a chance to kill you.”

“But they didn’t.”

“They came damn close. Too close. Look at your shoe.”

I look down. There’s a tire track on it.

“Did you smell the exhaust like I did? Did the heat of the tailpipe’s blast make you feel like you were in a desert wind? Did the grass kick up from the van’s spinning tires and get in your mouth?” He’s livid, voice low and furious, his face twisted in anger.

At me.

“Two out of three of your former friends are dead. Dead during meetings with you. Meetings in public places where murders like this just shouldn’t happen, but they do, damn it! These people aren’t messing around! You can’t take your own safety so lightly. No amount of stubbornness can defeat a determined killer.” He slams the seat in front of him with the heel of his hand.

I know he’s right. I do. Part of me accepts it. Internalizes it.

But another part needs to be in denial. Denial is my friend sometimes. It’s how I keep going.

“You’re my bodyguard, Silas. You’re my lover. You can’t treat me the same way as my bodyguard when we’re also growing closer. You can’t order me around and expect me to be an obedient little girl who does as told. You can’t simultaneously awaken me and deny me agency.”

Air passes through his teeth and into his throat as he looks at me, mouth open, his features conflicted.

“You can’t,” I insist.

His eyes narrow, grip lessening on my arm, sliding down to my elbow as he holds it with a gentler presence. “You’re right. I can’t.”

My shoulders drop, the conflict shifting into a safer emotional space.

“Are you telling me I have to choose?” he asks.

“Choose?”

“Choose between being your lover and being your bodyguard.”

The thought had never occurred to me. “No–I never said that.”

“You didn’t. I’m asking it now. If I can’t connect with you,” he whispers, his hand moving down to thread his fingers in mine, thumb softly rubbing the web of my hand, “and guard you, then it sounds like I’m in a double bind. There’s no way out. Not a good one, at any rate.”

“I want you for... both.”

“Then you need to do as I say when I’m guarding you, Jane. If you don’t, you could die.”

“And if I keep living a life where I have no freedom, I’ll die, too. A different kind of death, yes, but it’s like being snuffed out slowly.”

I don’t know how to have conversations like this. I do the only thing I can think of.

I go into the shop to find Lily, leaving Silas to ponder.

“Jane! Oh my God! It’s all over the news!” She glances at Silas and does a double take. “You weren’t kidding about the hot guy.”

A green cloud of jealousy pours over me, but clears quickly as she adds, “You look like you need a hug. Can I give you one?”

“How can you be so upbeat all the time?” I ask in a daze as she comes around from behind the counter and we embrace.

“I work in a flower shop. It’s in my contract. If people are sad and it’s because someone died, be respectful and somber. Otherwise, people are here to be cheered up.”

“That hug was just part of you doing business?”

“Oh, no. That’s because I’m a hugger and I think you’d make a good friend.”

I laugh, the sound of bitterness and decay.

“The news says a woman was crushed to death by a van. That it was intentional. Were you there?”

If I start crying now, I’ll never stop. I can’t talk about what just happened. My mind needs to compartmentalize, to categorize, to put trauma in boxes where it can’t touch the parts of my life that still need to function.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Did you know her?” Lily pulls back and gives me such a kind look.

“Yes.”

“Oh, Jane. I’m so sorry.” She looks down, then catches my eye. “Did you know? That someone would try to kill her?”

“No.”

“Do you think he was trying to kill you?”

“I’m... Lily, I’m not really thinking right now.”

“Jane.” Silas is behind me, in the shop. The cloying scent of all the flowers, the very freshness that I found appealing an hour ago, is now making me queasy.

So is the look on his face as I turn around.

“We need to go.” He looks over my shoulder at Lily and just blinks, exactly once. “Now.”

Lily grabs me and squeezes, hard. “I wish I knew what to do to help you,” she whispers in my ear.

I squeeze back. “You already have. Thank you.”

And with that, we leave.

The ride to the airport is a lonely experience, even in Silas’s arms. Long stretches of silence give me time to think. It’s only in silence that the rabid rush of thoughts becomes clear, separating out from the crowd effect of being crammed into too small a life.

“Duff,” Silas says, breaking the hush. “Turn on the radio. We need to know how this is being spun.”

I close my eyes. All I see is dead ragdolls.

I open my eyes and bury my nose in Silas’s lapel.

“Sources close to Amanda Witherspoon say that Jane Borokov initiated the meeting, requesting that they meet at the–”

“LIE!” I choke out. “That’s a lie! I have the texts to prove it!”

“Shhh. I know,” Silas assures me.

“In a series of text screenshots provided to us by sources close to the deceased, the evidence appears to corroborate the claim.”

“Faked!” I insist. “It’s all fake!”

“I believe you,” Silas says. “I do.”

Duff catches my eye in the rearview mirror. His expression is neutral.

“How do they do this? Who has the kind of power to fake electronic records like that? Why are they twisting the news coverage so quickly? Is it to paint me as the villain up front?” I ask Silas, pleading for him to give me a coherent explanation. In the pit of my stomach, I know there isn’t one, but this is where denial comes in.

“It’s not hard if you know how to use computer tools and feed the media machine at the right entry points.”

“Entry points?”

“Give the click-bait sites the information you want to have spread. Make it salacious and juicy. Give them what they want and they’ll spread it far and wide. The truth doesn’t matter,” he says, almost as an aside.

“It matters to me.”

“Me, too.” He kisses the top of my head. “We’ll sort it all out later.”

“At Alice’s?”

“Yes.”

“In a related case, the grisly death of Tara Holdstrom has been ruled a suicide by the–”

“She didn’t commit suicide,” I say with a long sigh. “I know I should be relieved I’m not being charged, but the lie.” I sit up and look at Silas, feeling feral. “You said–”

He nods, turning his head toward the speaker.

“–family members describe a woman with a long history of anxiety and suicidal ideation, leading to an attempt in 2011 that was unsuccessful. Although her parents sought treatment for years, in recent months, since the Bosworth and Borokov case blew wide open, Tara Holdstrom had grown increasingly erratic in her–”

“Turn it off, Duff,” I call out.

A snap of Duff’s wrist and the sound ends.

“They’re doing it again,” I say, my words like barbed wire on a newborn’s skin. “They’re setting it all up. The spin is just lurid enough to go viral. Tara was never, ever suicidal. Her parents must be going along with this because they have no choice.”

“Or were bought off,” Silas mutters.

“Before the van came, Mandy begged me to have Drew’s team protect her.”

Silas frowns. “She did? Tell me everything she said.”

I close my eyes and send myself back a few hours, remembering the family, the kid in the stroller, how that van could have done so much more damage.

And then I see dead Mandy, hanging half crooked from the tree as the van’s grill pulled her.

My stomach clenches, gag reflex kicking in.

“Jane? You just turned four shades of white and now you’re green.” He turns and grabs a small bottle of water, opening it and handing it to me. “Drink.”

“I’m not thirsty.”

“Drink anyhow.” His voice is soft concern mixed with steel.

I follow this order. He’s right. I feel better instantly.

And I don’t close my eyes again.

“She said she wanted what I have.”

“What you have?”

“You.”

“Me, specifically?”

“No. A bodyguard. Drew’s team. She said that after Tara’s death, she realized how bad it is. Tara told me the people behind all of this threatened her family with fake crimes. Said they would plant false child pornography on Tara’s father’s computer. Stuff like that–it’s what they did to make Tara, Mandy, and Jenna lie about Lindsay and say she begged for rough sex from Stellan, Blaine, and John.”

He reddens with anger. “You told me.”

“And Mandy was terrified. Absolutely terrified.”

“She’s dead,” he says under his breath. “She was right to be afraid.”

Bright lights flash in the distance as we get close to the airport. I know the drill now.

Going to Alice’s is my only escape.

Want what you have. Mandy’s words haunt me.

Because I do have something she doesn’t have anymore.

A beating heart.