Good as Dead(62)

“I blew the door clean off,” he said, eyes wide with fear. “I know I should have stopped but, I just . . .” His voice crumbled into sobs. I spun his shoulders toward me and held him tight.

“You panicked,” I said. He was frantic, so I tried to reassure him. “That’s natural, anybody would.” Of course he should have stopped. Fleeing the scene was the worst thing he could have done, but now was not the time for should-haves.

“Don’t tell Mom!” he begged. “Please!” This was of course an absurd request. I would tell his mother, and we would both go with him to the police station so he could turn himself in. Just as soon as he calmed down.

“It was an accident,” I said, trying to reassure him. “We’ll stand by you when you go to explain—”

But he cut me off. “Dad, a man died. We can’t go to the police!” His eyes were wild with desperation. The thought of not telling the police was crazy talk. And the longer we waited, the worse things would get.

“Logan, don’t be stupid,” I said in my stern, parental voice. “We have to come clean here.”

“No one saw me,” he insisted. “The street was empty, and even if they did, there’s no plates on this car yet, there’s no way to ID it.”

It was true. The SUV was almost brand-new, the plates hadn’t arrived yet. It would be difficult to positively ID the vehicle. But just because he might get away with it, didn’t mean we should try. I shook my head, tried to show resolve. “Logan, we can’t—”

“They’ll kick me out of Harvard,” he pleaded. “Even if it was an accident, it’s still manslaughter, that’s a crime. You know I’m not a criminal.”

I looked at my son. At seventeen, he was still just a boy, with barely a hint of facial hair and skin as fresh as snow. No, he wasn’t a criminal. But hit-and-run was a crime, and the more time that passed, the more likely he would be charged with it.

But before I could explain this, he hit me with another argument. “You have your career to think about,” he warned. “The press will have a field day with this.” Of course I had thought of that. And he was right, something like this would hurt me personally and professionally. It would ruin my life, my wife’s life, and my son’s entire future. He had the most to lose here. The fallout would be excruciating for him. But we couldn’t just pretend it hadn’t happened . . . could we?

“I sent Evan to the scene,” I said, not sure where I was going with this. “I have no idea what he’s going to find there . . .” I stopped short of promising anything. Could I really ask Evan to try to bury this?

“It will follow us forever,” Logan warned. “You’ll be that movie star whose son killed a man.” And then he said something that rocked me to my core. “It will kill Mom. She’d literally die.”

I thought about Kate. How much she loved her son, what it would do to her to have him crucified by the press, kicked out of Harvard, reduced to a celebrity cautionary tale. Logan was right. If she found out, she’d be crushed.

I dialed Evan’s number. He picked up on the first ring. “Almost there, Boss,” he said into the phone.

And I said something I immediately knew would come back to haunt me.

“I need you to fix this,” I told him.

There was a long beat of silence. I knew I was asking too much. I half hoped he would say he couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I was about to rescind the command, but he spoke first.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

And I knew that if there was a way out of this, he would find it.

And I didn’t know if I should be terrified or relieved.





CHAPTER 33


I had a busy day of meetings, but that’s not why I was avoiding Evan’s calls.

He was waiting for me in my driveway when I got home. “Jesus, Evan,” I said, “you can’t just hang around my house—”

“Did you talk to him?” Evan asked. I shook my head.

“Not yet.”

“You need to tell me what he knows about the deal we made with Holly,” Evan said a little too loud. Kate was inside, and I didn’t want her to hear him talking to me like that and become alarmed.

“I told him everything,” I said, trying not to sound defensive, then completely blowing it by adding, “he’s my son.”

Before today, I had never once worried about what my lawyer thought of me. It’s not that I didn’t care, I just trusted him to remain objective and do his job. But something had changed. He was no longer cool-headed and detached. Holly Kendrick’s loss had become personal for him, he didn’t even try to hide it anymore.

“I had to tell him,” I insisted. “I didn’t want him asking about his trust fund in front of his mother.” Of all the things I had to be ashamed of, hiding this debacle from Kate was the most pathetic of them all. We were supposed to be a team, our thoughts and values in lockstep. I had betrayed her, and that was by far the most sickening thread in this whole web of lies.

“So he knows about the video,” Evan said, and I nodded. I had considered not telling Logan. But in the end, I had thought it was important that he knew Holly and Savannah had leverage over us. Which meant his money was gone forever.