My phone is in my pocket. I can call Bowman, let her know what’s going on. She could be here in minutes and haul Madeline away. I’d lose everything.

But I’d be done with Madeline. And Madeline seems more and more like a killer.

Who might be here, at my door, to do something to me. I stole from her. I took money that belonged to her.

“Connor?” she says. “Please? We need to talk.”

Did she not do me in the night before only because Preston and Lance showed up and interrupted? Did they save my ass with their bottle of champagne and stupid jokes?

Has Madeline only spared me long enough to get the money she wants . . . and then . . . ?

I go across the room and take a steak knife out of a block on the counter. It’s one of a set Emily and I received when we got married. I doubt the knife will do me any good. It’s probably so dull it can only slice butter.

But it’s something.

My mouth is dry as I walk over to the door. I slip the knife into my pants pocket, within easy reach. The only question—would I actually have the guts to use it even if I needed to?

I’m about to find out.

I yank the door open. Madeline looks up, blinking in the light that spills from the kitchen.

“It took you long enough,” she says. “Do you know how cold it is?”

“Come on in, and yes, I do.”

She blows past me, and when she gets inside, she stomps her feet and runs her hands up and down her arms. Grendel stops barking and goes over to her, but she’s too busy trying to work warmth back into her body and she ignores him.

“I came by earlier and you weren’t here. Were you out at Dubliners with the new crop of students?”

“I wish. I was with the police, learning all about Sophia Greenfield.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

MADELINE

FALL, TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO

Madeline walked two blocks from campus to the attic apartment she reached by climbing a rickety staircase in back. The metal contraption looked more like scaffolding than an actual conveyance for human beings, and footsteps shook it like it was about to decouple from the building and tip over into the yard.

She was taking a full load of classes, including a nearly impossible science requirement—Introduction to Biology—with a professor who wore an oversized beard sprinkled with crumbs and talked in a whisper. Madeline preferred to sit in the back of the room, but the guy spoke in such a low voice she moved to the front, squeezing in next to two basketball players who sprawled out in their desks like they were in their own living rooms.