“Are you all right, love?”

“I’m fine.”

Scampering after her phone, Heather scooped it up and returned to her table, feeling the eyes of everyone in the bar resting like dirty fingers on the back of her head. She glared around at them all, ignoring how difficult it was to focus, and went back to her phone.

The legacy of the Red Wolf.

It was from The Post, the newspaper Diane worked for. After taking a moment to steel herself against the worst, Heather opened the article and quickly read it through. There was Michael Reave’s infamous mugshot, alongside a photograph of Fiona Graham, one of her standing with her students. The text included a quick rundown of everything that had happened so far, a summary of the historical murders and the details of all the victims, … and interspersed with that, everything she had given Diane: about Michael Reave being questioned and her impressions of him, the missing hearts, the flowers in the victims’ mouths, the fact that the police were examining the cards Fiona Graham’s students had given her for her birthday … It was all there. Diane hadn’t waited for the full story—she had taken the juicy scraps Heather had given her and woven them into a larger piece. She could see the joins. Here was a paragraph that was hers, word for word. And another two sections after that. Because what she had sent Diane had been a rough draft, a great deal of what Ben had told her was there unchanged, verbatim. Heather stared at her own words, and they winked up at her like razor blades.

“Fuck you, Diane.”

She could well imagine how it had happened. Diane reading over what she had sent, taking it to the other editors, and then, with every other paper leading with the copycat murders, the chance to whip the ground out from under their feet had simply been too delicious to resist. She could picture Diane nodding, agreeing. There’s no way we can sit on this.

Heather sat with her fingers pressed to her lips, her heart thumping too loudly in her chest.

He’ll know, she thought, staring at the bright little square of her phone screen. When Ben sees this, he’ll know I’ve spoken to the paper. He’ll know what I am.

For the longest moment, she was paralyzed with indecision. Should she call Diane, demand the whole thing be taken down? Should she call Ben, try and explain things before he even saw it? Or, should she order a bottle of rum from the bar and start making her way through it? In the end, her paralysis was broken by her phone ringing. The number was Ben Parker’s.

Fuck.

“Ben?”

“Heather …” There was a tone in his voice she hadn’t heard before. Her stomach did a slow somersault.

“Listen, I can explain— ”

“You know what I’m calling about then.” He sighed, and somehow that was even worse. His anger she could cope with, but instead he sounded tired, disappointed. “It was you.”