Oliver blinked at her, twin looks of shock in his and Maddy’s eyes. “What?” he barked, stepping toward Red. “What did you say?”‌

“It was your mom,” Red said, looking straight at Oliver. “She’s the one who asked me to do it, who set everything up.”

Oliver straightened, and Red waited for the explosion, for the landmine to trip in his eyes, taking them all with him. She didn’t expect what actually happened next. Oliver snorted, his face creasing as that wicked smile stretched through his skin, curling down at the edges. He laughed, the sound eerie and wrong in the too-quiet RV.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, slapping himself on the chest. “Our mom is not a criminal.”

But she was, if he put it like that, and so was Red. Weren’t they all, in some way? Had Oliver forgotten that they all knew his secret now? That he’d killed someone four months ago. How could what she and Catherine did be worse than that?

“She came to me last August, the day after Joseph Mannino was killed, and she asked me to say I’d been there, that I saw Frank Gotti leaving the scene.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Oliver laughed again, swinging his head. But Red wasn’t smiling. And then came the switch, tripping in his eyes. “Stop fucking lying, Red!” He pointed his finger through her chest, leaving a crater behind. “Stop lying. She wouldn’t do that!”

“It’s the truth,” Red said, picking her eyes up off the floor. “It’s the truth, Maddy.”

Maddy didn’t say anything, wincing as Reyna shifted, the towel growing bloody beneath her fingers.

“Shut up, Red!”

“Let her talk!” Arthur shouted back, rolling his shoulders as he stared Oliver down. “Catherine Lavoy,” he said, turning to Red. “And she works in the DA’s office? She’s the one leading the prosecution against my dad?” His eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Yes,” Red said.

“No,” Oliver argued over her. “Don’t listen to her. She’s a liar. I think by now we all know you’re a fucking liar!”

“Keep going, Red,” Arthur prompted.

“No, you shut up!” Oliver charged forward, pushing Red back against the kitchen counter, the tips of his fingers digging into her arms.

“Oliver, stop!” Maddy screamed, the sound frailer than before. “Let her speak. Please.”

Oliver thought about it for a moment, searching Red’s eyes, nails digging in deeper, then he let her go, drew back.

Red ran her hands down her arms, placing her fingers in the indentations left by Oliver, too big for her.

“You okay?” Arthur asked her. “You don’t care,” she replied.

He looked hurt by that, a flicker by his mouth.

“Go on, then,” Oliver said, head hanging off his neck. “Let’s hear the rest of your bullshit story, then.”

Red coughed, and she didn’t know where to look. Reyna was safe. Simon was safe. “Catherine told me that Frank Gotti was a terrible man. That he killed or ordered the killings of a lot of people. She said she was sure he did

shoot Joseph Mannino, but they didn’t have enough evidence to prove it in a court of law. That’s why they needed an eyewitness.”

“And what was in it for you?” Simon asked. He looked drained, wrung out, but there wasn’t a war zone in his eyes like everyone else’s, so Red focused on him.

“She said she would pay me for the risk,” Red said, sniffing. “After the trial, if they got a conviction, she was going to pay me twenty thousand dollars.”

Simon whistled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Oliver spat. “Mom doesn’t have twenty thousand dollars lying around.”

But they did. The Lavoys did have that. And more. Catherine had promised her. Said she could give it to Red, in cash.

“It wasn’t just that, though,” Red carried on, switching to Reyna, who wasn’t looking, she was staring down at the towel, at the color of Maddy’s skin. “I needed that money, yes, like you’ve all been saying, you know I need money.”

Simon shuffled awkwardly.

“But it was something else too. Joseph Mannino was shot twice in the back of the head. That’s how they executed people, Catherine told me.” She glanced over at Arthur. How his family executed people. Now it made sense why he didn’t want to join the family business. Not flipping houses, but bodies, drugs. He’d tried to tell her the truth, in small ways. She paused, readying herself for the punch to her gut. “That’s how my mom was killed too, five years ago. Two shots to the back of her head while she was on her knees. She was executed. At an abandoned power station on the waterfront in South Philly, pretty close to where Joseph Mannino was killed. The police never found out who killed my mom, the case is unsolved. But Catherine… your mom,” she said, eyes finding Maddy, “your mom told me that, though they could never prove it, it was likely someone from that family, someone in the Mafia, who killed her. It was their style. And my mom was investigating the family, looking into their network of crimes, right around the time she

died, so that makes sense. Maybe she found out something and they killed her for it.”

And if it was Frank Gotti’s fault that her mom died, then it couldn’t be Red’s fault. Except it still was, wasn’t it? There was enough doubt left for Red to fill in with her own guilt. They’d never be able to prove who it was, that was what Catherine said, and she knew about these things. But Red needed the money, and she needed somebody else to blame, and there Catherine was, giving her both. Everything she needed, to fix herself, fix everything. But now the plan was gone, dead, it only worked if no one knew.

Maddy winced, gritting her teeth, a high gurgling in her throat. Arthur shook his head, eyes crinkled with confusion.

“What?” Red asked him.

He sighed. “My dad would never kill a cop. He’s smarter than that. It was one of John D’Amico’s rules: never kill police. It kept the heat off them. Your mom was captain of a police district.” Arthur stared at her. “No one would have touched her.”

“B-but,” Red stuttered. No, don’t take it away from her, she needed it. “Mrs. Lavoy said—”

“She works in the DA’s office, right?” Arthur said, face scrunching even farther, chewing on some silent thought.

“She’s assistant district attorney,” Oliver said, cricking his neck. “Soon to be district attorney, and she’d never do any of the things Red is saying. My mother is not a criminal. Red is lying, do not believe her. That’s not the name you’re after. It wasn’t my mom. And what would even be in it for her, huh? Red? What does she get out of using you to set up Frank Gotti?”

Oliver’s eyes were aflame, burning into hers. She wasn’t lying, she wasn’t. “Well,” Simon stepped in. “You said it yourself earlier, Oliver, didn’t you?

You said it’s a historic case, and that if she gets the guilty conviction she’s pretty much guaranteed to be voted in as DA.” He shrugged. “She wants to be DA, right? That’s what she would get out of it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Oliver rounded on him now, enough fire in his eyes to share around.

But Red was watching Arthur instead, a shadow crossing his face as he looked down, thinking, thinking, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“What?” she asked him, and he jolted back into the room, staring around at the corners of the RV as though it were finally shrinking around them, a countdown to crushing them all.

“It’s…” He drew off, swallowed, started again. “My family has a contact in the DA’s office. Has for years, maybe even ten years now. No one ever knew who it was, though, they always contacted us anonymously, encrypted messaging on a burner phone. Used to talk only to John D’Amico, but then when he started to get sick, they would contact my dad and Uncle Joe— Joseph Mannino, I mean.”

Oliver stared at him, horrified. “There’s a leak in the DA’s office?” he asked. “Working with organized crime?”

Arthur nodded. “For years. That’s how we would find out the identity of witnesses in cases against the family, or the locations of members who had flipped and were cooperating with the police. Information about trials and other criminal cases against our competitors. They would get charges dismissed sometimes. Shipments of seized guns or drugs for evidence that we could then intercept. All of that came from this person inside the DA’s office. We paid them for their information, into an offshore account, but we never knew who it was. Until…” Arthur glanced at Red, an awkward shift in his shoulders, a glint in his eyes. “That’s how we got your identity, Red. Just two days after the charges were filed against my dad, when we learned there was an eyewitness, even though there couldn’t be, because my dad didn’t kill Uncle Joe. My dad told my brother to message this contact, to ask who you were.”

“And?” Red and Oliver said at the same time, and she didn’t like that. No, they weren’t on the same side. The RV was split again, but Red didn’t know where she belonged anymore. With Oliver, who had thrown her out of the RV to her death, who had held a knife to her throat, who forced Maddy into his plan and now she was dying over there? Or Arthur, who had been lying to her from the moment they met last September? Because he’d needed to meet her, for his own plan. Of course he’d shown interest in her, laughed at her

jokes, offered her rides home, charmed her with kind words and kinder eyes, she’d been his mark. What an idiot she was to think there was anything else there. He was here to get information from her and kill her, that was it. And yet Red found herself standing closer to him, edging away from Oliver, because the danger was in Oliver’s eyes, no one else’s.

“And,” Arthur answered, looking at Red, not Oliver. He had obviously chosen his side. “They told us they needed a day or two to get us the information. And when it came, in early September, it didn’t come the normal way, through their burner phone. My father received an email with Red’s name and social security and her home address. And the email address that sent it belonged to a Mo Frazer, who works in the DA’s office.”

“Ugh, of course it’s Mo Frazer,” Oliver spat. “That makes so much sense.

So he’s in bed with organized crime, is he?”

Arthur shook his head, unsure. “Well, we assumed he must have been the contact all this time, and maybe he slipped up on this occasion. But it never sat right with me. He sent that from his work email, his name right there in the sender’s address. That leaves a trace, somewhere on a server that law enforcement can find. It was so different from all the contact we’d ever had from him before. Careless.”

“He got sloppy,” Oliver said. “They always do.”

“Or…” Arthur bit down on his lip. “Or he wasn’t the one who sent it, because he isn’t the contact. It was someone trying to pin the leak of Red’s identity on him. Someone else in the DA’s office.”

His eyes found Red’s, latching on.

“Catherine Lavoy?” she whispered, the word escaping from her at the end, hitching up, turning the name into a question. No, it couldn’t be. But something was stirring in her gut, hot, sharp, goring through her as it climbed her spine to whisper in her ear: Catherine betrayed you, Catherine gave up your name months ago. No, Catherine couldn’t be the one who gave up her name just days after coming to her, asking her to be the witness. Catherine would know what giving up Red’s name meant; that they would kill her. It was the inevitable outcome. And Catherine wouldn’t do that to her, whether

she was the contact working with organized crime or not. She was her best friend’s mom, her mom’s best friend. There was no way.

Then what was that feeling in her gut? Solid somehow, inevitable, sinking deeper and deeper the harder she grappled to understand it.

Oliver snorted, stretching out his arms, his eyes a battleground, flicking between Red and Arthur.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, playing with his chin. “First, Red, you’re claiming that my mom came to you, offered to pay you twenty thousand dollars to say you witnessed Frank Gotti committing a murder. All so she could get the guilty conviction and become DA,” he said, nodding at Simon, mocking his theory. “And now, Arthur, you’re claiming that my mom is the same person who has been leaking information to your family for ten years, on the take. And that she must be the one who gave up Red’s name, but tried to make it look like Mo Frazer leaked it. How does that make sense?” he barked, striding forward, eyes widening as he passed each of them. “Those two things entirely contradict each other. Why would she ask Red to be the witness for the trial, but then immediately give up her name, knowing Red would likely be killed and the trial would never go ahead? That makes no sense. Come on, think. You have to think before you throw around baseless accusations about my family.” He screwed one finger into the side of his head, too hard, his eyes wild again, the uncanny calm before the explosion. “This is such bullshit, all of it. My mom is not your contact, she prosecutes criminals like you.” He jabbed that same finger in Arthur’s direction, pointed it like a knife. “Your stories don’t even make sense. My mom couldn’t have done both: ask Red to be involved to win the trial, and then give up her name so the case would never make it to trial. How does that work?”

But Red’s mind was circling something, around and around, digging back

through the hours of this terrible, terrible night. Maybe there was a way it did make sense, maybe there was a way this all came back to Catherine Lavoy, pulling the strings behind the scenes. Red couldn’t believe it, she’d known Catherine for as long as she could remember and even before that, but she also couldn’t believe the real Oliver she’d met tonight, that danger flickering just below the surface of his eyes. If he’d done everything that he had tonight,

then it was possible Catherine had used Red, betrayed her. Oliver was his mother’s son, after all. And what was it, what was the phrase she was looking for? Red looked between Maddy and Oliver, trying to extract it from their eyes, that well-known Lavoy expression that always made Red know she’d never truly be one of them. She dug through the flashes of this never-ending night, Maddy’s blood in a handprint on her face, the puzzle of Don’s blasted-open head, the fuzz of static, headlights flashing, the red dot on her chest, the check mark on Arthur’s hand matching the one on hers, the screaming, the smell of gasoline, shedding each awful part until she found what she was looking for. There waiting for her at the back of her mind, in Oliver’s clipped voice.

Red cleared her throat. “A plan must have two parts,” she said, repeating Oliver’s words, who was in turn repeating his mom. “You have to make sure either way plays out in your favor.”

Arthur looked at her, a shift of understanding in his eyes. “That’s win-win,” he said, parroting Maddy from before. And that feeling in Red’s gut twisted, sucking in everything around it. She didn’t want to believe it, but it was there, it was all right there and Red had to face it. It was never a plan that belonged to Red, they weren’t in it together, the two of them; it was one of Catherine’s win-win plans, and Red had just been a pawn, thrown away like she was expendable, disposable. Why? Why her? Did Catherine really not care about her at all? Didn’t she see her best friend when she looked at Red; didn’t she see the ghost of Grace Kenny there too? How could she do this?

“What are you two talking about?” Oliver spat.

“It does make sense,” Red told him, her voice finding its strength from that awful, twisted feeling, deep in her gut. “Perfect sense. Her plan had two parts. In the first scenario, I testify at trial and Frank Gotti is found guilty. Because of the successful trial, your mom is elected DA. And the second part: she gives up my name when asked and Frank Gotti’s family kills me, so the trial never goes ahead. But when they investigate where the leak came from, they’ll find that email Mo Frazer sent. It will look like he leaked my name. He’d be removed from office, charged with whatever crime that is. You said it yourself earlier, Oliver. Mo Frazer is your mom’s biggest competition

to becoming DA, her only competition. If they killed me, it would take Mo out of the running. In either scenario, your mom wins, she becomes DA.” She caught her breath. “Win-win,” she said darkly, because in one of those wins she was dead, and somehow Catherine was okay with that. Oliver Lavoy had thrown her out of the RV to die, and Catherine Lavoy had thrown out her name, half expecting her to die, playing that to her favor.

Liar. Catherine Lavoy was a liar. Arthur was a liar too, and so was whoever that second Yes vote belonged to, but Catherine was a worse liar somehow. And Arthur had said he was trying to keep Red alive, that this was a last resort. Was that a lie too?

Red felt bile rising up her throat, swallowing it down as she avoided everyone’s eyes, wiping a line of sweat from her top lip. Six of them in this RV, and at least five of them were liars, including Red. But she wasn’t lying anymore, everything was out, everything was gone.

“This is ridiculous,” Oliver said, because clearly he had no other word for it. “None of this is true. My mom didn’t do any of that. You know her, Red, how could you accuse her of these things?”

“I’m not accusing,” Red replied, and that twisted feeling flipped over, unfolded into rage, and rage was red, just like shame. She felt the heat of it in her cheeks. “It happened. She’s the one that offered to pay me to be the witness, told me that Frank Gotti was probably the man who murdered my mom. She manipulated me and then she gave up my name to them.”

“Shut up, you stupid little girl!” Oliver spat, switching his gaze to Arthur. “Do not listen to her, she’s clearly misunderstood something here. My mom is not the person you are looking for. It’s not her! Don’t listen!”

“Oliver, stop!” Maddy croaked, her head resting back against the refrigerator door like she was too weak to hold it up now.

“No!” Oliver looked at her, but Maddy didn’t shrink back from him; there was nowhere for her to go. “Red’s lying!” he shouted. “She’s going to get Mom killed and she’s lying!”

“What if she isn’t lying?” Maddy said, wincing as the words whistled through her throat. “Maybe it’s true.”

And as weak as Maddy was, bleeding out on the floor over there, skin as soft as ever but far too pale, she was still taking care of Red. Her job, her responsibility, though Red had never asked her to. Maddy wasn’t like Oliver, or their mom. Maddy was real and kind and good. If she could stand, she’d be standing on Red’s side of the RV, wouldn’t she? The two of them, against Oliver. And Red couldn’t think right now about where Arthur stood in all of that.

“Maybe it’s true?!” Oliver shouted at her, spit foaming out the sides of his mouth. “You think it’s true that Mom has been working with an organized crime group for the past decade? Being paid to dismiss cases and give them information? Do you think that sounds like our mom, Madeline? You think she’d fabricate a case against Frank Gotti, pay Red to be a witness, all to become DA? Does that sound like Mom to you?” he demanded. “Any of it?”

“I don’t know,” Maddy said, pressing her eyes shut.

“You don’t know?!” Oliver bent over her. “You think that sounds like Mom, do you? The mom who still cuts your sandwiches into triangles for you? The one who says whoopsie daisy whenever she drops anything? Does she sound like a criminal to you, Maddy?” Red could see the red patches climbing the back of Oliver’s neck as he bore down on his sister, his head falling to that strange angle, and she knew now that it was a warning sign. An explosion was coming. “The mom who has personalized ringtones for the entire family, sweet family memories, you think she’s a criminal? You think the woman who has a doorbell ringtone for you because as a kid you thought you had to ring a doorbell before going in and out of the house, you think the woman who would do something that sweet is a criminal?”

Something caught Red’s attention, pulled at it.

“What?” she said, staring at the back of Oliver’s head. “Your mom’s ringtone for Maddy is the harp.”

Red had been with Catherine Lavoy many times over the past six months, meeting in secret, going over her testimony, working out where she could have been before and after the murder without being caught by cameras in case Frank Gotti’s defense team checked. Maddy had called her mom a couple of times and Red had heard it, the harp ringtone, plucking up and

down. Probably a joke from that time when Maddy was fifteen and insisted she wanted to learn the harp to impress a boy in orchestra, giving up after the second lesson because no boy is worth that. Red was sure about it.

“Your mom’s ringtone for Maddy is a harp,” she insisted.

Oliver glanced back at her, the explosion delayed for now. “Right,” he said, breathing hard. “It is now, I think. But when Maddy first got a cell phone, it was the doorbell for a long time, because that’s Mom’s favorite story to tell about Maddy. I think she changed it a few years ago.”

“Doorbell?” Red said, sounding the word out on her lips, like it wasn’t a word at all, just a scattering of sounds, nonsense.

Doorbell.

One of the sounds of her shame, that lived there with it, deep in her gut. The sound she’d heard in the background of that final phone call with her mom. Twice. Her mom’s strange “Hello,” after she’d heard it. Except it was impossible, the police told her, she must have imagined it, or maybe she was confused. Her mom was found in that abandoned power station, no residential roads nearby at all, no houses, no doorbells. It wasn’t possible. But Red had heard it, she’d heard that sound and she’d never forget it, never forget that last phone call, not a second of it. “Doorbell ringtone,” she said, sounding out the possibility, memories shifting, slotting into new places.

“What are you talking about?” Oliver spat, eyes flashing.

Red didn’t know, she didn’t know yet, but there was an awful sinking feeling, trying to drag her down. She pushed up against it, feet lifting from the floor as she darted for the kitchen counter, for the saucepan of phones waiting there. Red lifted off the lid and peered inside, looking for her own phone. She pulled it out, the home screen telling her she was down to 12% battery, no service still. That was because the engineers were only just starting work on the broken cell tower. Had they heard her on the walkie-talkie before Arthur smashed it? She had no way of knowing if they had. If one of them had been pressing the button at the same time, then Red’s voice would have been lost in the dying night, never found, never heard.

Focus, focus on the doorbell. Something inside was telling her this was important. Maddy might be dying, the police might or might not be on their

way, but the doorbell was important.

Red unlocked her phone and tapped into the settings app. Her thumb moved down to the Sounds & Haptics menu option and she opened it. She scrolled down to the section labeled Sounds and Vibration Patterns and clicked to bring up all the options for ringtones.

Her eyes skipped down the list, past Cosmic and Night Owl and Sencha, thumb spooling the words up the page in a blur. No, it wasn’t here. Right at the bottom was another click-through menu, called Classic. Red pressed it and a new list appeared on screen. Alarm, Ascending, Bark, Bell Tower. Red’s eyes kept going, through the rest of the Bs, past Crickets, and there it was. Doorbell, sitting just above Duck in the list. Red turned the volume on the device all the way up to the top and then pressed her thumb against the doorbell ringtone, heart in her mouth like it already knew the answer.

Her phone dinged, a high double-chime pattern, up then down. Red pressed it again. And again.

That was it.

The doorbell. The doorbell.

The exact sound she’d heard during that last phone call with Mom, the phone call that changed everything, ripped the world apart. This was it.

It wasn’t a doorbell, because the police were right; it couldn’t be. It was a ringtone. Catherine Lavoy’s ringtone.

“What are you doing?” Oliver asked her, his shoulders shifting, staring down at the phone in Red’s hands.

“Your mom,” Red said, her voice breaking, splitting in half. “I think your mom was there.”

“Where?” Oliver’s eyes narrowed.

Red tried to speak, tripping over her own breath, too fast, throat closing in around it.

“With my mom. When she was killed.”