“You shouldn’t have come here, Maya,” he muttered, his voice carrying the familiar, raspy cadence I had grieved for twelve grueling months.
I stood frozen in the center of the apartment. On the coffee table lay two passports, a stack of cash, and forged identification documents. He didn’t look like a rescued survivor; he looked like a man who had intentionally erased himself.
“You died,” I choked out, wrapping my arms around myself as if to keep from shattering. “They found your ring. They found your wallet in the ocean.”
He rubbed his wrist, right over the Thanksgiving burn mark. “I placed them there. The boat fire wasn’t an accident, Maya. I set it.”
Before I could process the words, the front door swung open. Diane stepped in, holding a bag of ice. When her eyes met mine, her face drained of all color.
“Maya…” she breathed, letting the bag drop to the floor.
“You knew?” I turned on my sister, the one person who had held my hair while I threw up from grief, who had urged me to let go of a dead man. “You’ve been helping him hide?”
“It was the only way to keep you alive,” Diane begged, stepping between us. “If you knew he was alive, you would have followed him. And if you followed him, they would have killed you.”
Part 3
