Page 4

The mention of his name made the car smaller, the air thin. Nash Calloway. My now ex-husband, my executive producer, the man who had taken a nineteen-year-old girl with a guitar and a notebook of sad songs and turned her into a global industry. Over ten years ago. Back when I believed he had all the answers and all I had to do was listen to them.

"I don’t care about the alerts," I said, though my voice lacked the conviction I wanted. "Let him see them."

"Sutton, please. Just come back to Miami. We can figure this out. You can stay at my place. He won’t look there."

"He will look there," I snapped. "He looks everywhere. He has trackers on my car, spyware on my laptop, and half the paparazzi in Los Angeles on speed dial. If I turn around now, I go back to the cage. And I am not going back to the cage, Mindy."

"Okay. Okay, calm down." Mindy took a breath and I could picture her chewing on a thumbnail. "Look, just... find a motel that takes cash. Or drive back up to Marathon. There has to be something."

"I have three hundred dollars in cash," I reminded her. I was gripping my locket with one hand without even realizing it. "That gets me one night in a flea-bag motel, maybe two if I don’t eat."

"Then what? What is the plan, Sutton?"

"I don’t know!" I shouted, the frustration finally boiling over. Letting go of my necklace, I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. "I don’t have a plan! I just have a car and a wig that itches like hell and a desperate need to not be Sutton Vale for five minutes. I’ll sleep in the car if I have to."

"You cannot sleep in a car. You are⁠—"

"I am a person," I cut her off. "I am just a person, Mindy. I’ll figure it out. I’ll call you when I stop."

"Sutton, wait⁠—"

I tapped the red button, ending the call. The silence rushed back in, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the incessant thwack-hiss of the wipers. My hands trembled on the wheel, vibrating with the residual energy of the argument. I reached up and adjusted the wig—a dark, angular bob I’d christened The Karen. It was tight and hot, pressing against my temples, but it was the only shield I had.

To the world, I was the blonde, ethereal pop goddess with the sultry voice who sang about heartbreak in stadiums filled with weeping teenagers. In this car, I was a brunette woman in gray sweatpants driving a Hyundai into a storm.

The rain was coming down harder as I traveled over an island called Big Pine Key, turning the road into a black river. A monster truck passing in the opposite direction kicked up a wall of spray that coated my windshield, so I slowed down, peering through the gloom. To my right, the dark shapes of mangroves whipped in the wind, and to my left, the headlights from northbound traffic cut through the storm like a searchlight.

I can do this, I told myself. I can find a parking lot. I can recline the seat. I can be invisible. I have to remain invisible.

Finally, I hit a quiet stretch of road. It was dark as sin, but no one’s headlights were blinding me and I fell into an almost lulling peace. I whipped my head back and forth, blinking several times. I was so focused on trying to stay alert that I didn’t see the movement on the shoulder until it was too late. It stepped out of the darkness with terrifying grace.

A deer.

Tiny, impossibly small. No bigger than a large dog. It froze in the center of my lane, its eyes reflecting the headlight beams like two burning coals.

"No!" The scream ripped from my throat.

Conditioning took over. Don’t hit the living thing. Save the innocent thing. I yanked the wheel hard to the right.

It was a mistake.

The moment the tires lost their grip on the asphalt, I felt the car go. The car didn’t turn. It floated. Hydroplaning was a silent terror. The steering wheel went weightless in my hands, disconnected from the road and disconnected from reality. The rear of the car swung around in a wide, nauseating arc. The world spun in a blur of headlights, darkness, rain, and trees.

I slammed on the brakes, but it was useless. The car was a projectile now, obeying only the laws of physics. We left the road.

The sound was deafening. A chaotic crunch of undercarriage hitting gravel, followed by the violent snapping of branches as the car plowed through the brush. The seatbelt locked across my chest, knocking the wind out of me. Then the hood dipped, plunging downward.

Gravity.

The car tipped forward and sideways, sliding down the steep embankment of a drainage ditch. It hit the bottom with a jarring, wet thud that rattled my teeth. Silence followed. Absolute, ringing silence.

Then, water.

It rushed in immediately, cold and smelling of decay. The car was tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, nose down in the swamp.

"Oh God. Oh God."

I fumbled for the door handle, pushing against it, but it wouldn’t budge. The angle was too steep, or maybe the mud was holding it shut. I looked to my left. The driver’s side window was cracked open to let in the smell of the rain. The right passenger window was completely shattered.