As he walked to the university parking garage where he’d left his Audi, he called Maggie twice. She didn’t answer, and Jack couldn’t blame her. Classes were over for the day, and the frigid wind that swept the deserted campus sliced straight through his coat. He had not eaten since breakfast, and he yearned to simply collapse into a coma and never wake up. He’d heard that hypothermia was not a bad way to die. It was simply a matter of falling asleep as your body temperature plummeted and your organs shut down. A merciful end that he did not deserve. No, he was condemned to suffer through the consequences of his actions. A divorce. The loss of his job. Maybe even prison.

As he approached his car, he barely registered the sound of another vehicle’s engine rumbling to life.

He was just a dozen feet from his Audi when he looked up and saw a black SUV roaring toward him, its headlights blinding. Jack stumbled backward, flattening himself against the grille of his car, but instead of swerving onto the down ramp, the SUV kept rolling straight toward Jack, so close that he could hear the squeal of the proximity sensors. It did not screech to a stop until it had him pinned against his Audi.

“Hey!” Jack yelled.

No one answered.

Through the tinted windshield, he could just make out the silhouette of the driver: a man wearing a baseball cap. Affixed to the windshield was a student-parking sticker.

“Cody!” Jack yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

Still no answer.

“Cody, back up!”

The SUV only revved louder, the fumes stinging Jack’s eyes. He tried to squeeze free, but Cody took his foot off the brake, and the SUV inched forward, pinning him even tighter.

“Please don’t do this!” Jack said. “Cody?”

Through the windshield, he saw Cody’s hand move to his face. He was crying. So this was how Jack would pay for his sins, crushed to death by a lovelorn kid who was too grief stricken to see reason or to care about the consequences. One tap on the accelerator pedal, and three thousand pounds of metal would crush his pelvis. Even if he screamed for help, at this hour in this nearly empty garage, who would hear him?

I will never see Maggie again. Or our child.

“This isn’t who you are, Cody! You aren’t a killer!” Jack pleaded.

The door swung open, and Cody stepped out, face red and wet. He stared at Jack over the door. “You never even loved her,” he said. “You used her. Then you kicked her away. You killed her.”

“I didn’t do anything like that.”

“I’m the one who loved her.” He thumped his chest. “I was the only one. Not you and not Liam. Not even her own father.”

“Cody, I did not kill her. I wasn’t anywhere near her place when she died. I was home in bed.”

“Nobody else wanted her dead, only you. Nobody else had a reason.”

“What about you, Cody? Didn’t you have a reason?”

“What?”

“You loved her, but did she ever love you?”

This was a dangerous move Jack was making, but he didn’t know what else to do or any other way to appeal to Cody. Turn the blame on Taryn. Make her the one responsible for his heartbreak. She had used him, abused him. Cared nothing about him.

“Maybe you’re the one who killed her,” Jack said.

Just as he started to sputter an answer, headlights flickered toward them. Jack heard the sound of a vehicle approaching from the lower ramp, and a yellow utility vehicle rounded the curve.

Cody jumped back into his vehicle and threw it into reverse. Suddenly freed, Jack stumbled forward, his legs numb and wobbly, as Cody’s car shot past the utility vehicle and screeched away down the ramp.

“Hey, Professor. You okay?” called out the driver. Jack recognized him; it was Larry Walsh, one of the university’s Buildings and Grounds employees.

Jack was still so shaken all he could do was nod.

“What the hell was going on here?”

“Just—just an accident.”

“Didn’t look like an accident. He had you pinned.”

“I’m fine, Larry, thanks.” The feeling was back in his legs. He shuffled to the door of the Audi and unlocked it.

“Did you know that driver?”

“No.”

“I noticed he had a student sticker on his vehicle.”

“Please, let’s just drop it, okay?” Jack slid in behind the wheel.

“I got a partial read on his plate number. Pennsylvania.”

Shit. He would probably call it in. Jack needed to get out of here, fast.

He drove down the ramp, tires squealing, and pulled out of the garage. There was a parking space behind his campus building. He could warm up in his office, think over his next moves, and try calling Maggie again. Then he spotted the Boston PD patrol car parked near the entrance to his building, and instantly his plans changed. Instead, he drove past his building and kept going. Powered off his phone so it couldn’t be tracked.

But where to?

Home. He was desperate to see Maggie, and that was where she would be.

He took a roundabout route, cutting through the back roads of Cambridge and Belmont. When he neared his house, he didn’t slow down but kept driving past it, noting that the windows were dark and Maggie’s Lexus was nowhere to be seen.

He spotted two unfamiliar vehicles parked on the street. Unmarked police cars?

As he drove away, he kept glancing in the rearview mirror, expecting to see the headlights of a car in pursuit. The street behind him remained dark.

He had to find Maggie. He had to make things right between them. If she wasn’t home, there was only one other place she would be.

CHAPTER 44

FRANKIE

“Yeah, I’m absolutely sure the man was Professor Dorian. I’ve been working Buildings and Grounds for twenty-eight years now, so I know most of the professors. I know their cars too. I make it my business to keep an eye on everything that goes on around this campus.”

Larry Walsh is the university’s facilities supervisor, and judging by the excitement in his voice, this is the most thrilling thing that has happened on his watch in a long, long time. He has all the hallmarks of a wannabe cop: buzz-cut hair, boots planted in a wide stance, a tool belt sagging with keys, plus a walkie-talkie and a comically huge flashlight. In a spiral notebook, he’s jotted down all the relevant details of “the incident,” as he calls it, which he now proceeds to read to Frankie and Mac. “The vehicle was a black Toyota SUV, late model. Student-parking sticker on the windshield. I didn’t get a good look at the license number because the vehicle pulled away so fast, but I know it was a Pennsylvania plate, first letter F, then a two.” He closes his notebook and looks at the two detectives as if expecting a gold star for his performance.

“You said it looked like an assault on Professor Dorian, not an accident?” says Frankie.

“Oh, it was absolutely an assault. Crazy kid had the professor pinned between two vehicles, like he was about to crush him. If I hadn’t come around the curve just then, who knows what could’ve happened. Might’ve found his dead body lying here.”

“Tell us about this kid,” says Mac. “You said he was out of the vehicle when you got here?”

Larry nods. “As soon as I showed up, he jumped back into his SUV and took off. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around before. White male, on the hefty side. Dressed all in black except for a red baseball cap.”

“What do you mean by hefty?”

Larry looks down at his own bulging belly and sighs. “Okay. Fat.”

Frankie and Mac exchange glances, both of them thinking the same thing.

“I’ll check if Cody Atwood drives a black SUV,” says Mac, and he steps away to make the call.

“Why would a student attack him, Mr. Walsh?” Frankie asks. “Do you know what their fight was all about?”

“No idea. But you know, some of these students are spoiled rotten by their parents. They don’t know how to deal with the real world or with real criticism. Give ’em a bad grade, hurt their widdle feelings, and they go nuclear. I wouldn’t want to be a teacher these days, having to put up with these snowflakes. Poor Professor Dorian looked real shook up by the attack.”

“Yet he didn’t want to report it.”

“Maybe he was embarrassed. Or he didn’t want to get the kid in trouble. But I thought I should call it in anyway, and I have to say, I’m impressed by the response. Just a few minutes after I got off the phone with Boston PD, a cruiser came squealing up this ramp.”

“I’m glad you did call it in, Mr. Walsh. As it turns out, we’ve been trying to locate Professor Dorian all afternoon.”