Why would anyone look for me in my neighbor’s rose garden?

I had nowhere to go, no way to climb out of the hole without exposing myself to her. Realizing in the last second that we’d been fighting in silence, I opened my mouth to scream, hoping to wake up the other neighbors . . . when I heard a voice.

“Calvin? What are you doing?” Diana’s bewildered tone.

Above me, Calvin spun on his heel. “It’s a burglar. I came out to see.”

“What? What are you talking about?” A familiar face looking down into the hole. “Aarav, oh my God, what are you doing down there?”

“Don’t turn your back to him!” Panic was a screaming banshee inside my head. “He killed and buried Sarah here!” I’d gotten it wrong. So fucking wrong. It had always been Calvin, not Diana.

“Ignore him, Diana.” Calvin lowered the shovel with which he’d tried to hit me. “Ishaan told me the boy’s under the care of both a neurologist and a shrink. Serious psychological and mental problems. Jesus, Aarav, I almost took off your head.”

My eyes had adjusted to looking up at the moonlit world and now I saw Diana turn toward her husband, then glance back at me. “Calvin?” Her voice trembled. “Why would you attack him if he’s just digging in the garden?” The silk of her nightgown fluttered in the breeze, the matching robe she’d thrown over it liquid silver in the moonlight. “It’s weird, not dangerous.”

“I wasn’t thinking, Di. Just decided to get some air because I couldn’t sleep, then got scared when I heard someone out here.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “We should call an ambulance, get him sectioned for his own safety.” He reached for her.

Diana stumbled back a step. “You’re a surgeon, Calvin. You’re obsessive about protecting your hands. Gardening is the one thing with which you never help me. Why would you go back to my garden shed, remove a shovel from its hook, then come out here when you could’ve just called Ishaan or the cops?”

“Diana.” Calvin’s voice was ice calm, the tone of a surgeon dealing with a histrionic patient.

But Diana was having none of it. “What’s he saying about Sarah?”

“He’s rambling, raving as a result of drugs. I didn’t say anything because I know how much you like him, but Ishaan says his drug habit is spiraling out of control.”

I parted my lips to speak, then turned and began digging again.

“Aarav.” Calvin’s voice. “Stop.”

“Why?” Diana asked. “Leave him be. He’s not doing any harm—he can’t even get out of there without help. Leave him be—we’ll go get Ishaan.”

“He’s ruining your rose garden.” Calvin’s voice was closer now. “I said stop!”

I spun back, ready to dodge another attack, but Diana’s voice cut through the night like a sharpened blade. “Why can’t Aarav dig, Cal?” Brittle words. “What did you do to Sarah?”

My eyes still acclimatized to the moonlit scene above my head, I saw the exact moment when Calvin made up his mind. Shifting his balance, he took a step forward and began to bring up the shovel again, this time to swing at Diana. Both of them seemed to have forgotten I was there. Screaming a wordless cry, I thrust the top end of my shovel out of the hole and toward Calvin’s knees.

I hit with little force. But it was enough.

He went down hard just as my foot gave up, shooting pain through my leg, searing my brain with agony and crumpling me to the dirt in a cramped position that left me helpless and exposed. The last thing I saw before my brain stopped was a silver streak launching itself at Calvin’s fallen form, a woman’s scream shattering the night.

61

Blue and red lights flashed against my retinas, dull color against the fog that was my vision. I stared uncomprehendingly at the white tent several white-suited people were putting up around Diana’s rose garden.

Ghosts in a ghost tent.

“Don’t let this slide off, honey. You need to stay warm.” Firm brown hands pulled a silvery blanket around my seated form, the fabric reminding me of . . .

“Diana.” It came out a rasp. “Is Diana all right?”

The voice that answered didn’t come from the plump woman who’d put the blanket around me. It was harder, firmer. My brain supplied a name: Constable Sefina Neri. “Mrs. Liu is a little bruised but otherwise fine. Physically at least.”

I looked to the left, in the direction of her voice. She was haloed in the lights from the police vehicles behind her, her body clad in a heavy high-visibility jacket and her hair pulled back in an untidy knot.

“Did we wake you?” Neri asked.

“What?” I couldn’t quite put the pieces together, images and thoughts floating away like drifts of snow. “Diana? Hurt?”

Her look was piercing. “No.” She enunciated the word very carefully. “Beau and Mia Liu, and Ariki Henare, all woke and came to her aid. Diana has no major injuries.”

“Pink roses,” I muttered.

“I can’t tell if you’re in shock, or zoned out.” A glance over my head. “Is he high or did he take a blow to the head?”

“No knock that I’ve been able to see.” The gentler, warmer, older voice. “But he’s not mentally present. You know your business, Sefi, but I don’t think you should be talking to him now if you want anything admissible.”

I saw people beyond the rim of painful light. Isaac, that was Isaac. Why was Mellie wearing a bright green blanket? “Where’s Phil?”

“Phil?” Neri’s tone was confused. “You mean Isaac Brennan’s father? He’s in an elder-care facility. Do you believe he knows something about this?”