“I didn’t need to. We got incredibly lucky,” I say. I regret throwing the towel over the bourbon. My mouth craves a taste, but I resist. “And when I say ‘lucky,’ I’m being sarcastic. We have a cop here in Gatewood who loves to read thrillers. And guess which one she bought right away. So now I’m the guy they’re looking at.”

“Fuck,” Madeline says, thumping the table with her gloved hand. “I really didn’t think that would happen. But I didn’t even imagine the book was going to be published. I mean, that part of it is on you. You’re the idiot who submitted it. Remember, I wanted to take it back as soon as I turned it in.”

“Okay, I understand you didn’t expect it to be published. When you were gone, you figured that was the end of it.” I shake my head. “Madeline, if I’d known you were alive, I never would have done it. Forget the cops and all of this. I didn’t want to steal from you. I hope you know that now.”

She studies me and then she nods. “I can believe that. But once you published it and got paid, that’s when I decided to make the best of it. These are all unintended consequences. But so what? You wrote a book. I mean, I wrote a book, and they think you wrote it. Big deal. You wrote about a murder. People do that all the time.”

She reaches down, and I flinch. My hand goes to my pants pocket where I can feel the presence of the knife against my thigh.

“Jumpy much?” she asks, pulling out a tissue and wiping her nose. “I’m the one who should be nervous. I’m the one being followed.”

“Followed by—”

“Do you think I’m here to knock you off?”

“How would I know? Madeline, you wrote about details of that murder. Only the cops and the killer can know those things.”

She blows her nose, and it makes a surprisingly loud sound in the small kitchen. She stuffs the balled-up tissue back into her pocket.

“Did you even know Sophia?” she asks.

“Not at all,” I say. “But I used to walk Grendel by her house.” I consider how much I can tell her, how much she needs to know. But I’m in so deep, I might as well share. “I saw her and her husband through the windows of their house. I watched them sometimes.”

Madeline makes a face like she swallowed a fishhook. “Ugh. Creepy.”

“Not creepy,” I say. “It wasn’t like that. . . . I know it doesn’t look right. Just forget it.”