He’d never mentioned the case he’d stuffed into the safe the day the police had come for him, so she hadn’t either, and no one had pulled aside the filing cabinet during a search of the house. For a long time she’d expected someone—his lawyer, maybe his sister (a raging sociopath if ever there was one)—to come for it, but no one had. It had remained where it was until the night before Claudia had left, when she’d used the code she’d watched him tap in the day of his arrest and discovered she’d memorized it correctly. She’d thought then that it might prove a kind of insurance policy, a way of protecting herself and Jasmine if anyone found them; she wasn’t sure what she thought now. In fact, for the most part, she tried to forget they had it.

“When you made your call to the inspector,” Marcy said carefully, “did you ask if it was possible to keep our whereabouts a secret?”

Claudia swallowed dryly as she shook her head. Neither of them knew for certain what would happen if Marcus found out where they were, but there was no doubt in either of their minds that he wouldn’t be in prison for nearly long enough and when he got out he’d feel the need to punish Claudia for trying to escape him.

IT WAS JUST after eleven the next morning when Claudia showed DI Phillips and another detective into the flat. Both men wore somber expressions, though they were polite and even friendly in the way they greeted and thanked her for seeing them. Phillips was just above average height with thick gray hair and shrewd brown eyes, while his colleague, clearly a decade or more younger, was a fiery redhead with a face full of freckles.

It felt odd, she reflected as she followed them along the hall, to have men in this space that she’d made so essentially feminine, but for the moment at least they didn’t feel threatening.

Her mother was in the kitchen making coffee to accompany the pastries she’d picked up from the bakery earlier. Jasmine had an exam today, so she’d gone to school. She knew that the police were coming to talk to her mother and grandmother; they’d decided at the start of this that they must never hold anything back from each other. She’d been nervous when she left, even afraid that she’d come home to find they’d been arrested and taken away, but Claudia had assured her that wouldn’t happen.

She hoped she was right.

“This is my mother, Marcy Kavanagh,” Claudia announced as they entered the living area.

Phillips stepped forward to shake Marcy’s hand and introduce himself.