The message bounces back. She tried sending it again, but once again she got an error message. Andrea doesn’t understand what has happened—she can receive messages without a problem, but she can’t seem to send them. She turns her phone off and then turns it back on again but the message still fails to send.
She sits on the bed and tries to calm her rising anxiety. Suddenly, she remembers that Lance caught her sending messages to Charles the day before. It seems like too great a coincidence that her phone would suddenly stop sending messages to him altogether.
“No wonder Lance agreed to return the phone to me,” she thinks, “I should never underestimate Lance Hamilton.”
She looks at her watch and takes a deep breath. Then she opens the colorful floor-to-ceiling windows and jumps.
…
“M
