Chapter 18: Yvette's Turn

I opened the door on the chain, the way I had that morning.

Yvette's lips were blue.

Rain ran off her hair and down the front of a thin gray sweatshirt.

She stood on the grandmother's porch.

"How did you find this house?" I said.

"Oz's mother. I told her Palmer had put me out on the street."

"That part's true."

I took the chain off.

I put a kitchen towel in her hands and walked her into a room full of white-sheeted furniture.

Jonas stayed by the hall door, with a shirt buttoned wrong over the tape on his ribs.

He did not come closer.

Yvette sat on the arm of a covered chair and took out her phone.

"Watch," she said.

It was a news site.

A clip from nine o'clock showed Palmer Stanfield at a lectern in his navy suit, with his silver hair and his sad kind face.

"It is with a heavy heart," he said, "that Meridian Labs confirms Yvette Vandermeer, a longtime employee, has acted alone."

"We believe grief has unbalanced her, and she may be a danger to Mr. Wray and to others."

"The company has cooperated fully with police."

"Cooperated," Yvette said. "It means he gave them my name."

"There's a warrant. They said they'd take me at dawn. My cards are frozen. My apartment is locked, and my own mother won't pick up."

"Why would she?" I said.

"Because I told her what I did."

She looked at Jonas for the first time.

"I pushed you," she said.

He didn't say anything.

"I sat on the stairs until my legs stopped shaking. Then I walked out."

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