Chapter 2

At 5:40 the next morning, Detective Brooks from the traffic homicide unit came to my cell.

He placed a photograph on the interview-room table. My Porsche sat wrecked beneath a streetlight, its windshield starred on the passenger side.

"A young man was killed in a hit-and-run last night," he said. "The car is registered to you."

I made myself look at the photograph.

The victim had been real in my first life too. Rebirth had given me a chance to save my family, not him. I had known where and when he would die, but not how to reach an unnamed stranger in a city of millions without warning the Vales that I remembered.

The guilt would always belong partly to me.

"I was here," I said.

"We know. Your custody record begins more than two hours before the collision." Brooks folded his hands. "Where was your car key?"

"My primary fob is in my property bag. Sloane Vale has the second factory fob. She borrowed it after hers went missing during a trip and never gave it back."

His eyes sharpened. "Sloane is your fiancé's sister?"

"Yes."

"Who can enter your apartment?"

"My mother, Noah Reed, and Ethan. Ethan's access code still works."

Before Brooks could ask more, voices rose in the lobby.

Ethan arrived with Sloane and a freelance celebrity reporter behind them. My mother and Noah, who had returned before dawn, stood when they entered.

Ethan saw me through the glass and raised his voice for the reporter's camera.

"Chloe, tell them the truth. You got high, killed someone, and hid here to manufacture an alibi."

The old words landed exactly where I remembered them.

Sloane pressed a hand to her mouth. "How could you leave that poor man in the street?"

My mother moved toward the glass. "My daughter was in custody. You know she was."

The reporter angled his camera toward me. "Chloe, did your family's money help arrange special treatment?"

An officer blocked him and ordered him to lower the camera.

Ethan kept performing.

"I love her," he told Brooks. "But I won't protect her from murder. She needs treatment. She abuses her ADHD medication, and when she mixes it with alcohol, she loses control."

I had once believed that face—the tense jaw, the wounded eyes, the careful grief.

Now I saw how often he checked the camera.

Brooks said, "Do you have evidence supporting that accusation?"

Ethan produced a plastic evidence-style bag he had bought himself. Inside it was an empty prescription bottle bearing my name.

"I found this under the driver's floor mat at the impound yard," he said. "She never goes anywhere without it."

Brooks didn't touch the bag.

"Who allowed you into a secured impound vehicle?"

Ethan hesitated. "The car was still near the scene when I got there. The door was open. I was trying to help."

"And instead of giving the item to the officer at the scene, you carried it here?"

"I knew what it proved."

"Did you?"

Brooks asked an officer to bring my sealed property bag. The serial number matched the booking log. Through the clear plastic, my primary fob lay beside a prescription filled eight days earlier.

Then Brooks read the label on Ethan's bottle.

"This one expired six months ago."

Ethan stopped breathing.

Brooks continued. "Ms. Hart's current medication was sealed here before the collision. Her blood test showed alcohol but no amphetamine above her prescribed baseline, and she was under continuous observation. The bottle you're carrying does not identify the driver. It does raise questions about who entered her apartment, removed it, and tried to introduce it as crime-scene evidence."

Sloane took one step away from her brother.

I smiled at Ethan. "You should have read the date."

He stared at me as if I had come back from the dead.

He wasn't wrong.