A laugh from the group of officers startles Clare. She swipes her phone to life. The subject of Malcolm’s email is strangely plain: Pls read. She clicks it open, then closes it again. Why can’t she bring herself to read it? Why does she feel like she wants to cry? You’re just tired, she tells herself. Clare can recall a conversation with Malcolm in their time in between their first two cases, as Clare was healing from the gunshot wound. They’d stood on the beach with their feet in the ocean on the first day Clare had felt able to rise from her bed and leave her motel room.
How do you feel? Malcolm asked her.
Okay, she’d replied. Good. Different. Better.
It struck her at the time, that combination of words, that to feel okay, to feel good, was to feel different to her. That the facts of Clare’s life up until then meant that her baseline was unhappiness, fearfulness, dependence. She’d glanced at Malcolm, expecting him to concur, but found him frowning.
Don’t rest on your laurels, he said.
And though his words had bothered Clare, angered her even, she knew exactly what he meant. It was a warning to heed. Because no matter how confident and well-equipped Clare has felt on this case, she knows she must stay vigilant. That her reckless and angry side will always float just below the surface.
Clare checks the time on her phone. Ten minutes until Somers said she’d be here.
Finally she opens the email.
Clare,
I can’t stop you. I understand that much now. All I can do is tell you the truth and hope that it encourages you to stand off. Zoe Westman is a dangerous person. She is not missing, or dead. She left on her own volition but allowed it to appear like she’d vanished so that the police would zero in on me. She wants revenge for reasons I will not get into here.
I wish I’d given you more reason to trust me in the time we worked together. I can understand why you don’t. But I hope you will at least hear me out. I believe that Zoe knows about you. I believe she knows about our working relationship and that it has set her off. I cannot express to you enough the risk this brings to both of us. I only care about the risk it brings to you.
Clare, I have the means to help you move on. I can wire you money and connect you to people who will help you build a false identity. You can start over entirely. It is what I should have offered you the first time we met. I will regret it always that I didn’t. While it pains me to think of never seeing you again, it pains me even more to think of harm coming your way.
This email address is encrypted. It is safe to reach me here. I hope you will. Please do the sensible thing, Clare. For both of us.
M
Clare reads the message three times, then drops her phone into her lap and works to control her breathing. Hot tears spring to her eyes. She looks upward to the atrium’s glass ceiling, the vivid early morning sky. The boy with his mother watches her intently now, his brow worried, as if he can anticipate Clare’s breakdown. Is Clare tempted to take Malcolm up on his offer? No. The thought of it crushes her with loneliness. What, Clare wonders, a finger to her eye to wipe at the tears, is this yearning she feels? The concern Malcolm shows, however misguided, leaves her bereft. She could not foresee this sorrow, her own pain at the thought of never seeing Malcolm again. There is a hard ache in her chest. Clare opens the email browser and types quickly:
No, Malcolm. You don’t get to do this. I’m really mad at you. Where are you?
The moment she hits send, Clare regrets it. An emotional response, a childish one. Too intimate. She could have taken the time to think logically, to weigh Malcolm’s words against the information she’s gathered in her time here. Instead, she wrote from her gut. In under a minute, her phone pings with his response.
I know you are. I’m not far.
That’s all. Seven words, no sign-off. And yet this response speaks volumes, at once as an apology and a comfort. Clare goes to clear her throat but coughs instead. She wants to weep, from confusion and exhaustion, but when she looks up and sees Somers pressing through the revolving door, she holds her breath to contain it. Somers looks different to her. Sharper somehow, less soft. Clare does not stand. You see a person’s true soul when they don’t know you’re watching them, Clare’s mother used to say. Somers scans the room, her face pursed in a way Clare has never seen before. She will not wave at Somers. She will sit here and wait until she is noticed.
Malcolm sits on the edge of her bed.
Does it hurt? He’s pointing to her shoulder. Clare looks down to it. The bullet wound is bleeding, soaking through her shirt. That must hurt, Malcolm is saying.
Does it? Clare feels numb. She gathers the sheet from the bed to form a ball and presses it against her shoulder. The wound screams with pain. The bleeding won’t stop. The sheet has soaked red. Clare feels dizzy, but she must ask. She has to ask him before he leaves again.
What did you do to your wife?
I killed her, Malcolm says. She’s dead.
Clare wakes with a jolt. She has kicked the sheets from her hotel bed. She sits up, sweaty, thirsty. The alarm clock reads 11:39. It was a dream. Malcolm is not here.
Four hours ago, Somers drove Clare back to the hotel from the detachment. Clare sat in stony silence in the passenger seat of Somers’s rental car, unable
