She’s been avoiding my gaze for most of this conversation. But now she looks right at me. ‘Awake,’ she says. ‘For the first time in months.’

I know what she means. I’ve had a gun to my head more than once. You’re never more aware of the sensations in your body. The whole world goes sharp, like that ultra-HD TV in Hope’s living room.

‘So I put a little bit more pressure on the trigger,’ Hope continues. ‘Then a little more. Playing chicken with myself.’

She takes a sip of coffee.

‘Then what?’ I ask.

‘Then I woke up in hospital.’

An FBI agent laughs quietly in the corner. Nothing to do with us—he’s in his own conversation.

‘Let me give you some advice, Mr Blake,’ Hope says. ‘If you ever want to kill yourself, put the gun to the side of your head, not the front or the back. Apparently the brain can take a lot of damage to the left or the right brain, but not both. The doctor was thrilled. Apparently I’m a medical miracle. People like me advance neuroscience by decades. Mom and Dad, uh …’ She looks down at the table. ‘They were pretty disappointed in me. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t, because I still didn’t tell them about Shannon. It was way, way too late. Since then, they don’t leave me alone. It’s like I’m a prisoner. If Dad hadn’t gone missing, I wouldn’t even be here.’

‘Who found you?’

‘With a hole in my head? A neighbour heard the gunshot. The front door was unlocked.’

I feel a jab of sympathy for Biggs. He was tricked by his TA, lied to by his daughter, blamed by his wife for his daughter’s suicide attempt, and eventually abducted. Even his pacemaker let him down, in the end. And the guy who found his body didn’t report it—he took a bite out of him instead.

I don’t blame Hope, or Gabriela. The only bad guys here are Luxford and me.

‘Listen.’ Hope leans forwards. ‘Do you think Shannon killed my dad?’

She’s dreading the answer. She thinks she could have prevented her father’s murder.

‘If he did,’ I say, ‘then I can’t work out why. You’re sure he didn’t know about the rape?’

‘Positive. Like I said, he was always talking about how great Shannon was.’

‘Are you willing to go on the record about all this?’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Like this wasn’t a personal conversation already?’

‘I’ve been looking through your dad’s web search history,’ I say. ‘There’s some weird stuff in there.’