My twin sister d*ed in a fiery highway wreck a decade ago — so why did a dental office call last Monday asking me to drive over and collect her from the lobby?

I didn't push her in the car. Nora rode with her palms flat on her thighs, eyes locked on the side mirror the whole way. She spoke once, to tell me to take the long route. I didn't ask why. I just did it.

At my apartment she paused in the doorway and swept the room with her eyes the way people do when they're counting the exits.

"Sit," I said.

She sat.

I set a glass of water on the coffee table and stayed on my feet. My legs didn't feel trustworthy enough to bend.

"From the beginning," I said. "The crash. That night."

She wrapped both hands around the glass and didn't drink.

"The crash was real," she said. "I was in the car. I went off the bank. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that didn't happen."

"Then what? You climbed out and walked away?"

"Somebody pulled me out." Her voice had no color in it. "Before the fire got to the front seat. Someone dragged me clear."

"Who?"

She looked at the tabletop. "His name is Adrian Cole."

It meant nothing to me, and I told her so.

"It wouldn't," she said. "He was someone I'd gotten tangled up with before the accident. Someone I was trying to get away from."

"Get away how?"

She finally lifted her eyes. "He's not a man you leave clean, Erin. He had money. He had people who owed him. And he had things on me — stuff I did when I was young and dumb and thought I was in love." A breath. "When the car went over, I think some piece of me was relieved. Like it was finally done."

"But he pulled you out."

"He'd been following me that night. He saw the whole thing." Her lips pressed white. "He got me out, and then he told me exactly what would happen if I ever came back. To my name. To my life. To you."

The apartment was dead quiet.

"He blackmailed you into staying dead," I said.

"He said he'd take what he had to the police. Old things. Things that would've put me in a cell for years." Her voice caught on the last word. "And then he said if that wasn't enough to keep me gone, he knew where you lived."

Something cold slid down the middle of me. "He threatened me."

"He described your old place. The street. What time you left in the mornings." She shook her head slowly. "I believed every word. I had every reason to."

"So you let us bury a box."

She didn't answer. She didn't have to.

I sat down hard on the arm of the couch because my legs finally folded on their own. My sister — alive, ten years older, close enough to touch — and I couldn't decide whether to hug her or leave my own apartment.

"Where were you?" I asked. "All that time."

"All over. I changed my name twice. Cash jobs. I stayed off anything that leaves a trail." She stared at her hands. "I got very good at not existing."

"And Cole?"

"He checked in. Not often. Just enough to remind me he could." A pause. "Then about eight months ago, it stopped. No calls. Nothing. I waited. I kept waiting. And I started to think maybe something had shifted. Maybe I could finally—" Her voice broke clean in half. "I just wanted to see a dentist, Erin. I wanted one normal day like a normal person."

I looked at the window she'd been watching the entire drive.

"What did you see?" I asked. "In that parking lot."

She set the glass down with both hands, very carefully.

"A car," she said. "Across the street. It was there when I got dropped off. Still there when you walked in." She met my eyes. "Same make and color as the one he always drove."

The quiet between us felt like a held breath.

"Nora," I said slowly. "Does Adrian Cole know you're in this city?"

Her mouth opened. Closed.

The cheap prepaid phone she'd pulled from her jacket lit up on the table between us.