Now I told Teo the same thing I’d told him in the days after Quayle had nearly killed us both. It bore repeating. “After our interview I realized he was angry. He couldn’t hide it. I told myself if I had served time for a crime I didn’t commit, I would be angry, too. But I was careful leaving. I worked on my interview notes first, then more or less sprinted to my car. On the drive I checked behind me a few times. Then I got this crazy idea to take the rural route home. I thought I’d get there faster. I’d been away long enough to forget how badly it can flood.”

“It still does.”

I waited, but he didn’t say more. “He must have felt like such a winner. He had me and probably intended to take me somewhere and dump me. Most likely the dead me. He probably knew that once it was clear I was missing, you’d look for me. He could take vengeance on both of us, the cop and his girlfriend, the Free Press reporter.”

I returned my gaze to his. “And the dog who tracked him to the tree stand.”

Quayle had nearly succeeded. After I’d left Teo the message that I was sitting at the light at Flamingo and 7th, he had figured out which way I was heading. Even knowing I would be furious, he decided to trail me, just in case. Of course he saved my life. He arrived just as Quayle was wrestling me into his backseat at gunpoint, my hands bound by zip ties.

“Bismarck made it,” he said. “I made it. You made it.”

I looked down at his leg. “Why did you...?”

He gave the slightest shrug. “I was stupid to hang on to it as long as I did. One day I found myself wondering how I could end my life and make it look like an accident, and I realized the doctors were right. My leg was never going to stop hurting. I was growing too reliant on painkillers, and when I realized how dependent I was, I stopped taking them. But the pain was almost unbearable.”

“Oh, Teo—”

He shook his head, as if to say not to pity him. “My leg was never going to be the way it used to be, no matter how many surgeries I endured, and I was never going to work with a K9 unit again. I finally realized I would never be good as new. So I decided just to be new, instead. A brand-new me.”

“I really didn’t know.”

“Yeah, I can tell. I guess you moved on and stopped asking about me.” He smiled a little, but it was tight and controlled. “Right?”

I thought about lying, but I couldn’t. “No, I was asking, but I guess I didn’t ask the right people.”

“I don’t advertise.”

“I may have missed even more. You’re married?”

“What makes you think so?”

I let my gaze travel to his left hand, which was unadorned. “The woman who greeted me seems pretty proprietary.”