BACK IN THE cottage, the lights were still out. He’d told Eve to keep them that way. He came through the kitchen door and found her sleeping in the armchair, with the dog curled at her feet. Eve lay sideways, her knees tucked up to her chest and her hands to her face, innocent and vulnerable. Keegan watched her breathing softly, noting the small, quick flutter to her eyelids. He felt suddenly heart-pierced and protective. She seemed lost in a shallow sleep. She must have taken one of the sleeping pills when she’d gone to bed. That would explain how she’d missed the rumble of Ormsby’s big Lincoln driving right beneath her open window.

Back in the kitchen, Keegan put the gun and its pouch in a brown paper grocery bag and hid it under the sink. He’d take them to his office in the morning and lock them in his desk. Or maybe he’d pack them away in his apartment somewhere.

In the living room, he sat down on the sofa, exhausted but buzzing with adrenaline, calculating his next move. He watched Eve sleep and tried to collect his thoughts before he woke her and had to navigate her through the ordeal the two of them would have to face. It was like he was in the driver’s seat and Eve was his passenger, sleeping beside him, her face lit soft by the oncoming cars, her fate entirely in his keeping. There was something intimate that he didn’t want to hurry. He had the impulse to get up, to go over and touch her hair, but he sat still, simply watching, simply trying to get a fix on this moment and what it might mean. Here the two of them were, bound together in misadventure, and this coupling would be permanent, he sensed, for better or for worse. For richer or for poorer.

Keegan would have sat like this as long as he could, but the sun would soon rise on a dead man. An arriving cook or a housekeeper would stumble upon him; there’d be screams and sirens and all hell would break loose. He went to Eve and shook her gently.

He watched her face move from sleep to confusion to panic as she remembered where she was and why she was here. Her glassy eyes went wide. She gasped and sat up quickly, gripping the arms of the chair.

He put a hand on her shoulder. The muscles there were tensed. “Easy,” he told her. “I’m taking care of it.”

“Oh, God, oh, God,” she said—she might have been either cursing or praying—and her breathing turned quick and shallow. She sat forward and pressed her palm to her breastbone. “Oh, God. I killed him.”

She stood, and Keegan took her by the shoulders. She felt wild and edgy between his palms.

“I did, didn’t I?” she said. “I killed him.”