I already knew the answer. When I applied for the job, McIntyre dangled the data in front of me like a fishing lure, and I’d bitten greedily. I didn’t see the point in playing his game. “I’d rather know how many times you’ve found a bed soaked with blood and it turned out a woman ran out of pads. Don’t you get it?” I said. “We don’t have the team we need to do this right. We have to be on the same page, and that page has murder written all over it. This is entirely about protocol,” I told him. “I’m not okay with straying from procedure, and you shouldn’t be either. It’s sloppy, Tim, and sloppy is dangerous. You understand that, right? Please tell me you get that.”

Over the few weeks that I’d known him, I’d challenged myself to learn Tim’s tells. I was getting pretty good at extracting information from the most neutral of expressions. If Tim doubted what he was hearing, whether from a witness or suspect, his mouth shifted a hairsbreadth to the right. When he was nervous, he swallowed twice in quick succession. If I was ever in doubt, I could always rely on his eyebrows. But as he sat there in that comfy chair, staring up at me, his face was as indecipherable as a book written in a foreign language I was trying to read upside down.

“Sure, Shana. I get that,” he said.

I thought about explaining myself. I didn’t think about it for long. It was an asshole move, attacking him like that, but I figured Tim and I had years of thoughtless remarks and regrets and makeup sessions ahead of us. He’d stumbled across a trip wire. In time he would learn to sidestep those, just like I would circumvent his.

Silence. His eyebrows were a steady line. “So what now?” he said when he tired of waiting for an apology that wasn’t coming.

The question was rote. What came next couldn’t be answered with a word or a three-point plan. I was still in the middle of preliminary interviews, and there would be follow-up questions, hours more of exploration as I searched for a crack that would give me a sure foothold on the case. What Tim actually meant was you’re acting crazy, and I don’t know you well enough to understand why, so can we please move on?

“I’d like to check in with McIntyre,” I said. She’d have heard about the case by now, and I should have called her sooner, had been putting it off. I knew what McIntyre would say when she found out where I was, and after talking to Carson, I didn’t feel like listening to another lecture.

“Yeah, okay,” Tim said, faking cheerful. “But first, let’s see if Norton’s done buttering his toast points and spooning the caviar. I’m starving.”

ELEVEN

Tim and I broke bread with the Sinclairs while a grandson, brother, boyfriend was missing, possibly out in a historic storm, dead already or fighting for his life. I couldn’t help but think about how, just that morning, I’d sat at the breakfast table with Carson and reached for his pumpkin-spice creamer believing it was the most excitement I’d see all day.