“Really?” He looks at me. “When’s the last time you did something like this?”

The answer is never. I don’t take personal calls in the middle of a scene and interrupt what I’m doing. But this was different. I heard an alert tone from Lucy’s emergency line, and she’s not the sort to overreact or cry wolf. I had no choice but to check on whether something terrible has happened.

“What about the burglar alarm being on when she arrived this morning?” I ask Marino. “You told me the housekeeper turned it off. Are we sure it was armed when she unlocked the door?”

“It was turned off at seven-forty-four, which is when she told Hyde she got there. Quarter of eight is exactly what she said.” Marino takes off his sunglasses, starts cleaning them on the hem of his shirt. “The alarm company log verifies the alarm was turned off at that time this morning.”

“What about last night?”

“It was set, disarmed and reset multiple times. The last time it was armed was close to ten P.M. The code was entered and after that none of the door contacts were broken. In other words it doesn’t appear someone set the alarm and then left the house. It’s like the person was in for the night. So maybe Chanel was still alive then.”

“Assuming she’s the one who reset the alarm. Does she have her own code that only she uses?”

“No. There’s just one and it’s shared. The housekeeper and Chanel used the same dumbass code. One-two-three-four. Sounds like Chanel wasn’t particularly security conscious.”

“With her Hollywood background that would surprise me. I wouldn’t expect her to be trusting. And one-two-three-four is usually the default code when a security system is installed. The expectation is you’ll change the code to something difficult to guess.”

“Obviously she didn’t bother.”

“We need to find out how long she’s lived there, how often she’s in Cambridge. While I didn’t have a chance to look around I can say the house didn’t feel all that lived in.” As I explain this I’m desperate to tell him the truth about why we’re rushing to Lucy’s house.

I want to show him the video but I can’t. Even if I were able to I couldn’t let him see it. Legally I wouldn’t dare. I can’t prove who sent it or why. The video could be a setup, a trap, maybe one cooked up by our own government. Lucy admits on film to being in possession of an illegal firearm, a fully automatic machine gun that Carrie accuses her of stealing from my husband Benton—an FBI agent. Any violation involving a Class III weapon is serious trouble, the very trouble Lucy doesn’t need. Especially now.