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“It is the opposite of that.”

Pell watches my face for heat. I do not give her any. My hands are flat on the table. My phone is in a bag somewhere. I can still hear Ivy saying don’t come. I came anyway. What good did it do? I was late anyway.

Ortiz looks up from the pad. “Shane,” he says. “Night desk. The car bay. Was he working tonight?”

“I told him to stay home today. I drove myself to that meeting. I have not seen him. If you want to know whether he came in anyway, that is for Dev to tell you.”

I know I should ask where Shane is. I do not.

They send Ortiz out, then bring him back with coffee a short while later. I leave the cup where it is.

They ask it all again, only in a different order. Who was in the building. Who had a key. Who hated Kit. Who hated Ivy. Who would want me on the phone while a woman died. I give them what I have. I do not tell them about the bathroom. I do not tell them I stood there hard with that voice in my ear and almost did what it told me to.

I answer and I do not dress any of it up.

Through the glass I see Rafe in a chair down the hall. His cuffs are still stained. He will not look at me.

Dev walks past with a laptop held against his chest. Marcus is talking to a cop. I cannot hear what he is pointing at. No one else I know walks that hallway.

She goes back to the caller.

“Can you find them?” I ask.

“We have the numbers,” she says. “Not a name. A different phone each time. By the time we look at it, the phone is already dead. If we get anything, it is a place. Not a person.”

“So they are careful.”

“They are not stupid,” she says. “That is not magic. It is enough to keep them out of this room tonight.”

Ortiz writes that down hard.

They ask me about Tuesday again.

I tell them the shape of it. Not the parts that would make it look like I asked for it.

The caller wanted my mouth shut in a meeting and open after. The caller wanted me on nineteen, on my back, with my belt undone. The caller wanted a glove on my cock. The caller said pretty when you bleed.

Pell’s pen stops. Ortiz’s does not.

“The caller said that about Brennan?”

“Yes. After I found him.”

“And tonight? Chen?”

“I was not there for Chen.”

“Ivy.”

“Yes. I heard it on the phone. While she was still on the line.”

“And you still drove here instead of calling us first?”

“I was already on the phone with a woman being murdered in my stairwell. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Hang up and ring you while she was still breathing?”

That sits. She lets it.

“Am I under arrest?” I ask.