When I get home I’ll destroy the bodies in my house—and not by eating them. Reese Thistle’s boyfriend wouldn’t do that. I’m going to melt them in acid and pour them down the drain. Then I’ll call Warner and tell her I quit. Today is the first day of my new life. I’m scared, but excited too.

Thistle and I drive in silence. I want to talk about last night, but I don’t know what to say. Is it too soon to ask if we can spend tonight together, too? Hopefully she’s wondering the same thing. I’ve almost worked up the courage to ask when we reach the apartment building, and the opportunity is gone.

We pull into a parking space and walk through the cold to the door. Different doorman—tall, black, balding, bearded, with triple stud earrings. We tell him the apartment number and he pushes the button without a word.

Gabriela answers: ‘Hello?’

‘It’s Agent Thistle and Timothy Blake,’ Thistle says. ‘Can we come up?’

The door buzzes, and the doorman opens it for us. We ride the elevator up.

By the time we get to the apartment door, it’s already open. Gabriela looks out at us worriedly, wearing a green and white kimono.

‘Have you found him?’ she asks.

‘We’d like to talk inside,’ Thistle says. ‘Is your daughter home?’

‘She got a call early this morning from a friend,’ Gabriela says. ‘She just went out.’

That’s a rare stroke of luck.

‘Kenneth Biggs isn’t Hope’s real father,’ I say. ‘Is he?’

Gabriela hesitates. ‘He raised her, didn’t he?’ she says finally. ‘That’s real enough.’

Thistle and I share a glance.

‘Hope gave us a DNA sample,’ Thistle says, ‘so we could identify her father’s remains, if we found them. But if he’s not her biological father, then that sample is misleading.’

‘Did you find something?’ Gabriela asks.

‘We did,’ Thistle says softly.

Gabriela staggers back as though she’s been punched in the gut. Her face crumples and she moans.

Thistle and I step through the gap, and close the door behind us.

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 33

I go up and I go down, to the sky and to the ground. I am present tense then past, let us take a ride at last. What am I?

‘Does Hope know?’ Thistle asks.

She and Gabriela are sitting on the sofa in the lounge room. I’m slowly making tea in the kitchen, out of sight, but not out of earshot. Thistle didn’t explicitly send me in here, but I could tell from her body language that it was what she wanted. I used to be good at reading everyone except Thistle. Not anymore. It’s as if the sex has made us telepathic.

‘She has no idea,’ Gabriela says.