“And it’s being spoofed anyway just as it has been,” I tell Marino emphatically. “This is the same thing that’s happened three other times today, the first time when I was inside this house early this morning. This is exactly what it looked like.” I show him what’s on the display of my phone.

The message has no text, only an Internet link, and I step away to give myself some privacy. I turn my back to him as I click on the link, and I’m instantly struck by the absence of a Depraved Heart title sequence this time. Then I realize why. The video hasn’t been produced. It hasn’t been scripted or edited. It isn’t a recording. It’s live and Carrie’s not in it.

Janet is. I watch her in the small display. She’s in the middle of something, clipping her phone to the waistband of the faded scrubs she had on earlier, walking over to Lucy. They’re inside the basement, what we refer to as the bomb shelter only we don’t mean it in an ominous way but rather as an affectionate nostalgic reference to a past that I shouldn’t think about right now. As I’m watching. In real time. As if I’m there.

Control your thoughts.

When I first met Benton he worked in the Behavioral Science Unit, his elite squadron of psychological profilers located inside Hoover’s former bomb shelter. I used to descend into the bowels of the FBI Academy to meet about cases and I wasn’t above trumping up excuses. When I wanted to see Special Agent Benton Wesley there was no extreme I wouldn’t go to, and on numerous occasions Lucy was with me. She knew what was going on. She’d known for years that Benton and I were more than colleagues. She understood what it meant.

He was married with children. Professionally it was a conflict for the chief medical examiner and the head of the FBI’s profiling unit to be sleeping together. Everything we were doing was wrong. It would have been considered shameful and unethical but nothing was going to stop us, and the unexpected reminder of that is powerful. I’m overwhelmed by a reaction I couldn’t have anticipated and I realize how hurt I am. Everything I’ve been through and the day is far from over, and where is he? Benton is with his tribe. The FBI is his tribe. Not his family. Not me. I was almost murdered two months ago and he’s with them. How could he be loyal to them after what’s happened? How could he be okay with what they’re doing to Lucy?

Focus!