My pulse quickened.
His route home from the business trip ran in the opposite direction from the accident scene. He had no reason to be there. That alone was suspicious.
I dug through every detail I could remember, searching for more threads to pull.
I was working backward from a conclusion: Tyler and his assistant had framed me together. The pieces were already falling into place. All I had to do was wait for the police to arrive and verify every suspicion, one by one.
While I was still sifting through memories, footsteps echoed from outside.
They were here.
I sat up straight, shoulders back, and waited.
This time, I would drag the two of them straight to hell.
"Vivian, why did you do this?" Tyler looked at me, anguish carved into every line of his face. It didn't look like acting. It looked like I'd actually killed someone.
A second life, and yet this scene was burned into my memory.
He'd asked me the same question last time. The exact same words.
Back then, when they told me I'd committed a hit-and-run, I hadn't fought back. Hadn't said a word. I'd just let them take me away.
That was why my last life ended in bitterness and regret.
Not this time.
I asked the officers calmly, and sure enough, the reason for their visit was the same: a hit-and-run.
The script hadn't changed. Which meant I had the advantage.
"That's impossible." I looked directly at the officers. "I've been home all day. I never left. We have security cameras. You can check the footage."
"That's right, we have cameras." Tyler jumped in, his voice eager. He led the officers toward the monitoring system.
But when they discovered the cameras were down, my head went blank.
How?
Panic surged through me. I'd been careless.
I'd walked into this with assumptions from my previous life, treating the situation like a script I already knew. That was a mistake. If Tyler and Susannah Floyd were going to frame me, of course they would have tampered with things in advance.
Susannah stared at me. "What did my mother ever do to you? Why did you have to kill her?"
Her voice yanked me back to the present. I had to stay calm.
Tyler cut in quickly. "Susannah, I'm sure Vivian didn't mean to. It was just an ordinary accident. She panicked when she hit someone."
"Vivian, you shouldn't have run. If you'd stopped to help her, she wouldn't have died. If you'd just answered my calls, none of this would have happened."
Calls. Right, the calls.
"You called me?" I pressed. "Is that what you're saying?"
"Yes. I called you over and over, and you never picked up."
I thrust my phone at the officers. "Look. There are no missed calls on my phone. Not a single one."
Tyler leaned in to look, then held out his own phone. "Here. Check my call log."
His screen showed dozens of outgoing calls to my number.
How was that possible?
"You ran my mother over right in front of Tyler's eyes," Susannah said, her gaze boring into me. "He watched you abandon the car and flee. Why won't you admit it?" Her voice cracked with fury. "You even deleted the call records. What did my mother ever do to deserve this?"
The cameras were down. Tyler's phone showed a call history that mine didn't.
This had gone completely off script.
Stay calm. You have to stay calm.
I couldn't fall apart now. I was certain I hadn't driven anywhere.
I asked the officers where the accident had occurred. Then I turned on Tyler. "You were coming back from a business trip today. There's no reason you'd be on that road. So why were you there?"
I locked my eyes on his. If he was lying, there would be cracks.
Pain twisted across Tyler's face. "It's Women's Day. I wanted to surprise you. I'd had a necklace custom-made at a jewelry store over there. I went to pick it up."
