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?

My hands shook so hard I nearly dropped the phone.

Nora saw my face and crossed the room in three steps. She looked at the screen and made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

"He knows," I said.

"He's known." Her voice had gone very quiet and very flat — the way a person goes when the panic has blown past the point where it makes noise. "He's been watching. Waiting for me to come up for air." She took the phone out of my hand. "He didn't have Ivy specifically. But he knew I had a reason to stay buried. Now he's found the reason."

"We have to get to her. Right now."

"If we run straight to her, we walk him straight to her."

"And if we don't—"

"I know." Nora set the phone down. Her jaw was iron. "I know." She pressed her fingers to her mouth, thinking. Then: "Call the neighbor. Not on your phone. Not on the clinic line — that's already blown." Her eyes went around my apartment. "Do you have a landline?"

"Nobody has a landline."

"A neighbor you trust? On this floor?"

I thought of Mrs. Adeyemi in 5C, who'd brought me a pot of soup when I had the flu two winters back and never once asked me a personal question. "Yes," I said. "One."

"Go. Borrow her phone. Call whoever's watching Ivy. Tell her there's a family emergency and you're sending someone to pick Ivy up. Don't say who. Don't explain." Nora was already shrugging into her jacket. "I'll go out the back. I know how to move without a tail. I've had ten years of practice."

"And then what? Where do we take her?"

Nora stopped. Turned around. "We're not running," she said. "Not this time."

I looked at her.

"Everything's in that envelope," she said. "Names. Dates. A timeline. Two photos I should never have been able to get and got anyway. And a recorded call from four years ago where Adrian tells me, in his own voice, exactly what happened to Warren Fisk." Steady as a table. "I've been carrying that envelope because I was scared. Today he put a picture of my daughter on your phone." She picked it up off the table. "I'm done being scared."

"Nora—"

"I need one thing from you." She held my eyes. "I need you to trust me. Not because I've earned it — I know I haven't, not after all of this. But because right now, today, I'm the only person alive who knows exactly what he's done and exactly how to prove it."

I looked at my sister. Alive. Ten years older. Holding an envelope that had lived in three hiding places.

"Tell me what you need me to do," I said.

We moved fast after that.

I went to Mrs. Adeyemi, who handed me her phone without a single question. I called Nora's neighbor — a woman named Deb — and told her there was a family situation and that Nora herself would be there inside the hour. Deb said Ivy was fine, they were halfway through a movie, and she'd have her ready.

Nora slipped out through the building's service door.

I made one more call from Mrs. Adeyemi's phone. Two years earlier, at a work function for the Brennan Group, a colleague had introduced me to a woman named Detective Paula Reyes, who worked financial crimes. She'd handed me her card and said, in that offhand way that turns out to matter later, "If you ever hear something that doesn't sit right, call me directly."

I'd kept that card in my desk drawer for two years without knowing why.

Reyes picked up on the second ring.

"It's Erin Caldwell," I said. "We met at the Brennan Group event. I've got something that doesn't sit right. I've got a lot of things."

A short pause. "Talk to me."

"Not on this phone. Can you meet me in person? Today?"

Another pause, shorter. "Give me an address."

I gave her mine. Then I went back upstairs, sat at my kitchen table, and waited.

Forty minutes later, Nora came through my front door with a small girl who had dark eyes and a gap where a front tooth used to be, holding a stuffed rabbit by one ear.

Ivy looked up at me with my sister's exact expression and said, "Are you really my aunt Erin?"

For a second I couldn't get anything out. "Yes," I managed. "I really am."

She thought about that, serious as a judge. Then she held the rabbit out toward me. "This is Buttons. He gets scared in new places. Can he sit with you?"