“Nah, they’re real,” he said with the easy comfort of a man who’d grown up surrounded by an enduring love. “They have their arguments—last time I was home, Dad was in the doghouse because he forgot to line the bin with a bin liner and Mum dumped a bunch of gross trash in it before she realized and it got all filthy.”

“World War III right there, hotshot.” She’d been a toddler of three when her parents divorced, and while Clive was too charmingly slippery a character to get into fights, she’d seen the look on Jacqueline’s face when Clive dropped Catie off for visitation with her mother: a kind of pained disappointment that went to the core.

At some point in her teens, Catie had put a label on that look—it had been of a woman who knew she couldn’t rely on this man. What kind of mother, Catie sometimes wondered, would Jacqueline have been if she’d had a true partner for a husband—someone who not only pulled his weight but who called her to account when necessary? Instead, it was Ísa who’d been thrust into the role of ensuring Jacqueline didn’t totally abdicate her responsibilities as a parent.

Danny had parted his lips to reply when the intercom buzzed, and suddenly there was no more smiling. Rising, he went to answer and let the detective up. She cleared the table in the interim, not wanting this stranger to see any hint of vulnerability. Danny was feeling exposed enough.

It turned out Detective Green had brought his partner along with him.

Catie figured the heavy presence had to be because of Danny’s status as a well-known athlete, but after the two had taken their statements and gotten Viliame’s details so they could interview him as well, the younger of the pair—Detective Shan—put away her notebook and said, “I don’t know if this’ll make you feel better, but you’re not the first person this has happened to in the past month.”

Danny’s face was granite. “I figured it happens.”

“No, this specific drug combination at this specific bar,” she clarified. “All males with no associated assault or theft. One target was out alone and collapsed in the street; a few inches to the right and he’d have hit the curb, almost certainly suffered a severe head injury. Then there’s the problem of dosage—the individual doing this is getting reckless, might accidentally give someone too much.”

Seated right beside Danny, their bodies touching, Catie fisted her hands on her thighs. “You mean some sicko is doing this for the hell of it?” Exactly as Dr. Smitherson had theorized.