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What came out over the next ten minutes was a portrait. A woman with a history of complaints—harassment, nuisance, obstruction. She’d gone to the precinct so many times they knew her by name, and not in a fond way. She’d filed against officers, tried to get a restraining order against a cop, stirred up trouble at a women’s shelter she’d gotten herself attached to. The word the officer used, twice, was unstable.

Keith wrote it down. He thanked the man and ended the call and sat with the notepad for a moment.

Mentally unstable.

He’d known her for less than twenty-four hours total. He was aware of that. One afternoon and one evening—that was nothing, that was barely an introduction, and he had no business forming a character reference on the strength of salted caramels and a shared fence post and whatever had happened afterward in his apartment, which he was doing his level best not to think about at work.

But he was also a man who spent his days reading people for a living, and he had an impression. He was holding that impression up against the word unstable, and they did not fit.

She was sharp. She was funny in a way that required quick thinking. She was deliberate—even refusing to show him her phone had been calculated, not panicked. The woman who had spotted his ginger ale from across a noisy bar, who had sent it back as a joke and watched him catch it, was not erratic. Erratic people did not land jokes like that. Erratic people did not sit across from investigating officers and say I could, but I won’t and hold that stillness while they said it. That kind of calm came from reading the room completely, not losing your grip on it.

He sat at his desk for a long time. He was not thinking about anything in particular. He was watching the shadows of leaves moving against the window, amber going to rust in the October dark, and he was letting the quiet do its work the way he’d always had to let it—letting the noise settle until what was actually true could surface.

Rachel Grant either hurt her cousin or she didn’t.

His gut said she didn’t.

His gut had been wrong before.

Chapter 7

Shape of Silence

The hotel room was quiet. Tatum and Kayleigh had gone to Simone’s room an hour ago and hadn’t come back. Nobody had knocked on Rachel’s door. Nobody had texted. She sat on the edge of her bed in the particular silence of being iced out, which was different from ordinary silence—it had a shape to it, a specific pressure, and she’d been familiar with it long enough to stop being surprised by it.

She wasn’t going to knock on Simone’s door. She wasn’t going to explain herself, or apologize, or perform contrition for a fight she hadn’t started. Sloane was in the hospital, and Rachel was sorry about that—genuinely, in the hollow way that sat behind her sternum and didn’t move—but she had not put her there, and she was done being looked at like she had.

Her phone rang. Rachel picked up before the second ring.

“How are you doing,” Ana said. Not a question exactly. The kind of statement that left room.

“I’ve had better evenings.”

“I heard. Kayleigh’s mom told me.” A pause. “I’m looking at flights.”

“Don’t.”

“Rachel—“

“Ana.” She kept her voice even. “You have enough going on. I’m fine.”

She was not entirely fine. But she was functional, which was what mattered, and Ana had lost her job that afternoon and was in no position to fly across the country to hold Rachel’s hand. That was not a trade Rachel was willing to make.

They went back and forth on it for a few minutes—Ana pushing, Rachel holding the line—and eventually Ana let it go, which meant she’d try again in the morning, and Rachel would hold the line again then too. It was a familiar pattern. They were good at it.

After she hung up, the room felt quieter.

She sat with it for a moment, then opened her contacts and scrolled. The name was filed under the firm name rather than a person—easier to find that way, less personal. She’d added it eight months ago after the second arrest, when it had become clear she was going to need someone in her corner who spoke the language.

She took a breath.

Then she called.

The voicemail picked up, which she’d expected at this hour. She left a message that was short and specific: her name, the situation in broad strokes—questioned in connection with an assault, released, no charges—and a request for a callback in the morning. She kept her voice steady. She’d gotten good at that.

She hung up and set the phone face-down on the bedspread.

Through the wall, she could hear the muffled sound of the television in the next room. Someone laughing. The ordinary sounds of people who were having an ordinary evening, which hers had stopped being somewhere between the mirror maze and the moment she’d turned around in that lobby and seen the badge.