Cocooned in the backseat, Emily felt as if her life, like a disordered closet, had been suddenly emptied out, assumptions upended. What to toss? What to keep? As if she had choices.

She thought back: this had all started with Ryan’s call to Becca, begging them to help his wealthy friend. Emily had assumed that Quinn was one of Ryan’s wenches, as he liked to call them. And yet, when Emily saw the pair of them together, she sensed no undercurrent, no spark. In fact, he barely seemed to know her. In the same way, Emily doubted that the man in the green pickup truck was Ryan’s client. Which made her wonder: Was Ryan a straw man, set up to receive Emily’s distrust while more and more evidence piled up connecting Emily to Walter Newell’s murder? Who had put the boxes from that storage unit in her basement and the empty ice bags in the trunk of Frank’s car? The obvious answer: Frank. Or was she overreacting and all those months of futile fertility tests had left her feeling estranged and paranoid?

By the time the police car pulled up to the back of the station, Emily was no closer to deciding which pieces of her life to neatly fold and tuck back in place, and which she was ready to jettison. It all came down to whether or not she trusted Frank.

One of the officers escorted her to a booking area. Just visible through a doorway behind the counter were a pair of holding cells. Empty.

The officer waited while she signed into a logbook. Then he pointed to a camera mounted on top of a computer monitor on the counter. “Please look up there.” Emily did exactly what Frank would have advised her to do. She covered her face. “No, thank you.” She said it loud, so there’d be no way they could act as if she hadn’t objected. She was relieved when the officer took this in stride and herded her upstairs.

The layout of the police department was familiar to Emily now. She continued down a corridor. The door to the room where she’d been taken to give a written statement was open. At first Emily didn’t recognize the woman inside wearing dark glasses, a white coat, and a red head scarf, despite the warm night. But on a second look she realized it was Quinn Newell. Quinn glanced at Emily but remained poker-faced.

Then Ryan appeared from behind Quinn, blocking Emily’s view. He stepped through the doorway and looked past Emily and down the corridor, where Frank strode toward them with yet another police officer.

Emily’s officer nudged her on. She looked back. When Frank got to Ryan, Ryan said, “Sidebar,” and pulled Frank aside.