HANNAH (Silicon Valley Billionaires 3)

“I’ll have to ask him.” I watched cars fly by on the freeway, feeling unsettled and angry.

My thoughts eventually circled back to Fiona. Seeing my friend’s quiet devastation had gutted me. “I don’t even know what to say about what Fiona’s going through…”

Lauren sighed. “I don’t, either—but you and I both know you can’t get over losing someone suddenly.” Lauren and I had direct experience with this. Our parents had died in a car cras

h. “All we can do is be here for their family.”

“And get rid of Li Na,” I said bitterly.

Lauren patted my hand. “Yeah. That would help.”

* * *

I let the hot water rush over me as I combed my hair and put more conditioner in. I didn’t ever want to get out of the shower. I wanted to stay under the warm water, pretend everything was normal, and forget my friend’s husband had been murdered by the woman who’d been chasing my sister for the past year.

Lauren and Fiona were both trying to make the world a better place with their technology. They wanted to help people, but they were being targeted and punished for their visionary technological advances.

I closed my eyes as I rinsed my hair, but I kept seeing the Pace girls in my mind. I remembered when my parents had died—I’d been sixteen. When the police had come to the house and said there’d been an accident, I didn’t believe them. No one drove more slowly or safely than my father in his Subaru station wagon. I’d made the officer take me to the morgue at the hospital before I believed they were dead.

But then I saw them. They were dead.

I shivered as I turned the water off, then wrapped myself in a towel. I didn’t want to think about my parents. I didn’t want to think about the poor Pace girls. But I couldn’t stop the flood of thoughts about Fiona and her girls and what they were going through right now—what Li Na Zhao had done to them, done to all of us. I started to blow dry my hair as my thoughts zigzagged around, making me feel dizzy. I pictured Jim Pace dead, his body sprawled in the parking lot. Wesley, hooked up to all those tubes. Those little girls’ faces, the way they’d clung to their favorite stuffed animals. I’d dug out my old teddy bear and slept with it after my parents died. It had smelled familiar, a scent memory from my childhood. I’d wept against it, begging to go back in time.

I kept working on my hair, but suddenly I realized that I was having a hard time catching my breath. I put the blow dryer down and threw on my favorite Stanford T-shirt and a pair of sweats. Every time I exhaled, I felt my body shake. I held up my hands—they were shaking, too.

What the hell?

Feeling dizzy, I sank down onto the terracotta floor. I leaned my back against the wall and did yoga breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth. I tried to clear my mind and concentrate on my breathing, but it was as though the floodgates had opened. The images wouldn’t stop coming.

Those poor girls. Their little faces. I felt a hole in my chest as I ached for them.

Wesley in the hospital bed, pale as death.

Jim Pace sprawled in the parking lot.

Wesley getting shot in front of me in the kitchen. He went down and slammed his head on the marble island. I’d thought he was dead.

I’d thought I’d never see him again.

The morgue at the hospital when I was sixteen. I could never forget what my mother’s face had looked like, waxen but calm. Dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

I tried to catch my breath, and I heard myself gasp. I gulped for air as my whole body shook. My hands curled into fists, and I felt tears stream down my face. Breathe, Hannah. But I couldn’t. I was hyperventilating.

And the images kept coming.

Gabe shooting the driver in Oakland, the window splintering into a million tiny cracks.

The burly guard standing over me in the dark. I could feel his breath on my face.

The hollowed-out, flat look in Fiona Pace’s normally vibrant eyes.

“Wes,” I croaked desperately. “Wes.” But my voice didn’t raise above a whisper. My heart hammered in my chest, and the tears poured freely now. I could hear my ragged, wheezing breaths. Am I having a heart attack? I tried to raise my hand to bang on the door, but I couldn’t get my arms to cooperate.

“Wesley.” I tried to yoga breathe, but I wondered if this was it, if all the stress was finally getting to me and I was going to die like this, on my sister’s stylishly tiled bathroom floor in my ratty Stanford T-shirt.

“Help,” I said as my body shook. “Help!”