Which meant he knew that her real name wasn’t Ellie Batista. It meant he knew she had applied to the LAPD under a false name—an alias—and that was a crime, one that could send her off to prison, her career gone. The thought of prison was terrifying, but not as terrifying as no longer being a cop. No longer having the resources to search for her brother. The panic she felt in that moment was so sudden, she felt like she was choking.

Kelly stared at her intently, waiting. Ellie remembered advice someone had given her: If you don’t like the story, change it. She had to bear down hard.

“Your first question, about me being a carrier,” she said. “I’m not one.”

Kelly nodded, his features relaxed.

“As for my interest in the blood world—how can I not be interested? Carriers are being snatched from their homes or taken at gunpoint from cars or at school, and we lack the resources and manpower to find them. We don’t know much of anything about the blood world, how it operates, what a blood farm looks like. I want to know more about this world. I want to know everything.”

“But you haven’t explained why.” Kelly smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“What I’m asking,” Kelly went on, “is for you to explain what’s driving you. Why you’ve devoted your spare time to memorizing the names of missing carriers. Someone who makes that kind of commitment—well, there’s got to be a deep, personal reason, don’t you think?”

In the hospital room, while being examined by a first-year resident with stale coffee breath and thinning hair, and in the silence of the car ride on the way home, Ellie had started thinking about the moment when Detective Alves and/or someone from the police commissioner’s office would start asking her more specific questions about how she knew so much about the victims. She knew she would be answering a lot of questions in the days ahead, and she was prepared.

“Your older brother, Rodger,” Ellie said.

Kelly’s eyes widened at the mention of his brother and at the unexpected segue. Ellie continued, riding the rails of her gut instincts. “You’ve talked about him in multiple interviews, about how he died from a heroin overdose. He was sixteen, you were thirteen, and your parents had placed him in yet another private treatment center. Only this time he escaped. No one knew where he was for nine days, if I remember correctly.”

Kelly was too much of a pro to react. He sat as still as a stone statue, letting the silence linger and waiting for her to explain her train of thought—possibly hang herself with it.

“You and your parents lived through nine hellish days before the police found his body,” Ellie said. She left out the part about a homeless person finding Rodger Kelly dead in Echo Park, because she didn’t need it for emphasis. “My point is, you found your brother. No matter how painful it was, you and your family got closure.”