“Most of it was boring. I didn’t bug your bedroom.”

“You bastard.”

“But I make damn good corn on the cob.”

Incensed, she spun away from him. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

“Wait. Did you burn your hand?”

She looked back at him, wondering how he knew.

“The kettle whistled. You cried out.”

“Never mind my hand.” She placed it behind her back. “I want to know what’s going on. First Elaine…” Grief, exhaustion, dismay, fear, and another dozen emotions avalanched and overwhelmed her. Hot tears filled her eyes. Her voice cracked. “I hate you.”

“Let me see your hand.”

She didn’t move, so he went to her and reached behind her back. His touch wasn’t rough, but still she flinched as he took hold of her hand. He examined the red splotch on the back of it, then pulled her over to the sink, turned on the cold water tap, and guided her hand beneath the stream. “Don’t move.”

She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but the cold water brought instant relief, so she stayed. He got ice cubes from the dispenser in the door of the refrigerator and returned with them. Placing his hand beneath hers, palm to palm, he supported it while gently rubbing the ice cubes across the burn.

She stared at their joined hands as the water spilled over them, became hypnotized by the slow circles he drew on the back of her hand with the ice cubes. “Don’t be nice to me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You’re ruining my life.”

“You ruined your life the day you went in cahoots with Jasper, whom I first came to know as Weston Graham.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of it.”

His eyes bored into hers. “Where is he, Talia?”

“Atlanta. If you were listening in, you no doubt heard us laying plans last night. He and I—”

“He’s not in Atlanta. He never went. He never intended to.”

“You’re trying to trick me like you’ve been doing since I met you.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he curled his fingers up, linking them with hers and keeping her in place.

“Listen to me.” His voice was low and emphatic. “All those questions the detectives put to you about Jasper, where he was tonight, and so forth? They already knew the answers. And your answers didn’t mesh with what they know for fact.

“Local police, the sheriff’s office, state police. They’ve got resources. Mike has even better resources. We’ve all been busy trying to determine Jasper’s whereabouts ever since Elaine’s body washed ashore and witnesses claimed that a man was at the helm of her yacht.”

“Wearing a baseball cap that belongs to you.”

“I didn’t realize it was missing until Locke mentioned it. I’m certain that Jasper took it from the apartment the night we went out to dinner.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a hard shake of his head. “We’ll argue the finer points later. What’s important to your future, short-term and long-range, is to stop lying. Now.”

“I’m not lying.”

His jaw tensed angrily. “You lied to those detectives about a damn dental appointment and disagreeable pain pills. If you’ll lie about something that trivial, you’ll lie about something large.”

She lowered her head. “That was a fib, not a significant lie.”

She could feel his angry breathing against the crown of her head. “You’ve lied about plenty that is significant, Talia. Confirmed by the airlines: Jasper wasn’t on that flight, nor any other Delta flight, private plane, or another carrier. Confirmed by TSA: His boarding pass was never scanned. He wasn’t on their security cameras. Confirmed by the Lotus Hotel: He didn’t check in or show up for your dinner reservation. All of which you told those detectives that he did.” He put his finger beneath her chin and tipped her head up, forcing her to look directly into his incisive eyes. “Where. Is. He?”

“If he’s not at The Lotus Hotel in Atlanta, then I. Don’t. Know.”

He held her stare for several seconds, then dropped the remnants of the ice cubes into the sink and turned off the faucet. They shared a dishtowel to dry their hands. “Do you want to put some salve on that burn?”

“I think it’s okay.”

He motioned her toward the living area. “Remember, I gave you a chance.”

Mike, Gif, and the two detectives had drawn chairs up to the coffee table and were huddled around it, intent. As Drex and Talia entered the room, Locke was saying, “But no bodies were ever discovered?”

Drex said, “Not until Marian Harris.”

Talia stopped in her tracks. “Marian?”

“Your friend Marian Harris.” Drex pointed at the sofa. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself, but this is going to take a while.” In order to join the group, he pulled a chair over to the table, took off his jacket, and hung it on the back before sitting down. As he loosened his necktie, he asked Mike, “Have you worked forward or backward?”

“Forward. Starting with—”

“Lyndsay Cummings,” Drex said. “The first we know of.”

“Right.” Mike shifted in his chair. “We’d just got to the Harris woman.”

“Please don’t refer to her like that,” Talia said. “She was my friend.”

Drex crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “You and Jasper talked at length about Marian last night. My ‘excessive’ interest in Key West had you both skittish.”

“Did you bring up Key West only to bait me?”

“Yes. And guess what? You bit.”

He turned to the detectives. “During her conversation with her husband about it, Talia admitted to getting upset over any mention of Key West and/or Marian Harris.” He recapped what he’d overheard.

“This is a direct quote that refers to me. Jasper asks, ‘Do you think he knows something about Marian?’ Talia replies, ‘No. Maybe, Jasper. I don’t know.’ Jasper, anxious and insistent. ‘He’s living next door, Talia. I should have known about this immediately.’

“They go on like that for about ten minutes. Neither confessed to nailing her inside a shipping crate, but it was a telling discussion. On the heels of it, they made plans to leave town. It’s recorded. You can listen if you want.”

Talia was looking at him with horror. “Jasper thought you were on a fishing expedition, that you might have nailed Marian inside that shipping crate.” She turned to the other men. “Jasper didn’t completely trust him from the start. He thought he was a phony.

“He became even more suspicious when Drex expressed his interest—which was excessive—in Key West. Out of the bug’s range, Jasper theorized that the discovery of Marian’s body might have made the culprit nervous, that he was going around to former acquaintances of hers and testing their reactions to any mention of her or Key West.” Looking back at Drex, she said, “If he sounded skittish, it was because he didn’t want happening to me what had happened to Marian.”