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“No,” Lock said. “Mina, it’s okay. I want to.”

He took my hand. I had the urge to pull it away. He lied to me. “You gave her a ribbon,” I said.

Lock nodded. “I should have told you when you asked. Mina, I’m so sorry. I thought I could handle her.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just what I said. I dated her… if you could even call it that. Long before I even met you, Mina. She told me her name was Andrea. I told her my name was Matt Woodson. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted to go out with someone who didn’t know all my baggage. It was stupid. I understand that now. We mostly communicated through the app. And we met face to face twice. Once when I took her to dinner. Another time, we spent a night together.”

“The Frank Lloyd Wright house,” Roy said. I resented his presence. It seemed I would have to be humiliated in front of him again.

“What about her letter?” I asked. “Lock, I found a love letter she wrote to you.”

Lock narrowed his eyes in confusion. “I never got any letter from her.”

“She planted it,” I said. “Then she stole it back from me. So you’d all think I was making it up.”

“It sounds like something she’d do,” Lock said. “And, yes. I gave her a ribbon. We were… intimate. Do I have to go into graphic detail in front of my wife?”

“No,” Roy said. “If I feel the need for a follow-up, we can deal with it later. Tell me how it ended.”

“Badly,” Lock said. “I realized halfway through the weekend that Andrea… Corrine… wasn’t the person I thought she was. She called me by my real name. It just raised a serious red flag for me. I was concerned she had a different agenda. It was a violation of my trust and my privacy that she went to some pretty odd lengths to find out my real name. I tried to end it as gentlemanly as possible. I took her home, walked her to her door, and told her I didn’t think it was going to work out between us. She got very angry. She started calling me vile names. She slapped me. I turned my back on her and left. That was it. If it had been up to me, I never would have had any contact with her again.”

“But you did.” Roy and I said the same thing at the same time.

“Yes,” Lock said. “She started showing up. Waiting for me by my car. I was having lunch with an associate in Ann Arbor. She showed up at the restaurant. She was tailing me. I told her if she didn’t stop, I’d have to file a police report and get a restraining order. But things escalated. She had taken photographs without my knowledge the night we spent together. I have no idea how. I never saw a camera. She threatened to make them public if I didn’t get back together with her. She actually thought she could get me to marry her.”

The photographs. I knew they were the same ones Corrine had left for me at the hotel. I assumed they were recent. Lock was saying she’d taken them five years ago.

“How did it end?” Roy asked again.

“I called her bluff,” Lock said. “She wanted me to meet, and I stupidly agreed. I should have deleted that app the second she slapped me. But I met her. I told her in no uncertain terms that I would not be blackmailed or bullied. That if she wanted to publicize those photos, I couldn’t stop her. But that was the last time I would ever communicate with her. I left. I deleted my WhisprMatch profile. Weeks went by, and I never heard from her. Then I got an envelope in the mail. She sent me a copy of the police report she’d filed. She concocted this whole story about me being the one to stalk her. But she didn’t use my name. She used Matt Woodson and claimed she didn’t know how to find me. It was all lies. She said I threatened her. Assaulted her. That never happened. She put a note in the envelope threatening to tell the police who I really was. But nothing ever came of it. I realize now I should have gone to the Kalamazoo County sheriff and explained all of this back then. Then I never heard from her again until three days ago.”

“Stop,” I whispered. “But you still lied. Lock, I asked you about those ribbons. Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t you tell me about Andrea?”

“I was a coward. I saw how this case was affecting you. It was starting to come between us. I thought you were going to leave me. I didn’t want to lose you over something I didn’t do,” he said. “I swear, I had never heard of Corrine Egan. Only Andrea Phillips. But, yes, when you told me about the ribbons, it bothered me enough that I met with a private investigator. His card is in my wallet if you can find it. It might be at her apartment. I don’t know. She took my phone. She took everything I had on me.”

“Your phone,” I said. I fished mine out of my pocket. I pulled up the last text Lock had sent me, accusing me of violence, saying he wanted to be apart, and asking me to meet him. I gave it to Roy to read.

Lock looked puzzled. “What is it?”

Roy finished reading the text and handed my phone to Lock. The color drained from his battered face as he read it. “I never sent that, Mina. I swear. I didn’t send that. She had my phone.”

“That wasn’t you?” I asked, my breath catching in my throat. In my heart, I desperately wanted to believe it. Could I?

“No!” he cried. “Mina, I’m so sorry.”

“Did you text Mark Gilchrist?” Roy asked.

Lock shook his head. “For what? No, I haven’t had access to my phone for days. She did something to me. Three days ago, I was sitting in a meeting in Manhattan. I got two texts from an unknown number. One was a picture of you, Mina. You were asleep in our bed alone. Then I got a second one. It was a picture of a dead dove strangled by a red ribbon right on our front porch. It was a direct threat to you. I was out of my mind. So I called the number. It was Andrea, I mean Corrine. She told me she’d do much worse if I didn’t meet with her. She told me not to call the cops. Mina, I tried to call you to warn you, but you weren’t answering. She gave me the address to her apartment and told me to meet her there. I ditched my meeting and was on the next flight out. When I got there, I told her what would happen if she hurt you, Mina. And I was going to come straight back and come with you to see Roy. I was going to tell you everything. I told her that. I called her bluff and tried to get you on the phone, but you wouldn’t answer. I was terrified she’d done something to you. She wouldn’t admit it, but the way she was acting, I thought for sure she’d already hurt you. And she just sat there, pouring me coffee like everything was normal. She must have spiked my drink. I blacked out. You can check my facts. She had me park at this gas station around the corner from her apartment. My car’s probably still there or towed away by now. When I woke up, I was in her bed. In her apartment. She had me zip-tied to one of the bedposts.”

Lock held his hand up. His right wrist was bruised. I’d seen enough crime scene photos to know those were ligature marks.

“I was in and out of it for days. Hallucinating. At one point, I thought I heard you, Mina. I tried to call out, but it was like a nightmare where you scream but no sound comes out.”

“You heard me,” I said. “Roy. You know I went there. I went to Corrine’s, telling her to stay away from me. From us. You were inside. I didn’t know. I didn’t hear you.”

My stomach churned at the thought of it. Lock had been just a few feet away when I confronted Corrine at her door.