I hear a knock at the door. That will be the Seattle police. I silently thank Montrose and God. In that order.

“Better answer that,” I tell Adam.

He gives me a nervous look and then heads to the foyer.

It isn’t the police, though. It’s Kristen Moss. She’s dressed to the nines for a night out, but her manner is anything but celebratory. There’s a hardness to her that unsettles me. Her face is stiff, her features unyielding.

“What are you doing here?” she asks me.

“You know why I’m here, Kristen,” I say.

She looks at Adam. Her eyes spark. “Can’t you keep your mouth closed?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Adam says. Then he looks at me. “Drink your drink. Kristen and I have dinner plans.”

I most definitely will not drink anything.

My eyes go to the necklace, and Kristen snatches it without a word.

“I don’t know how you did it,” I say to her as her heels dig into the thick black-and-white area rug, “but you killed Sophie, didn’t you?”

Kristen stands still as a statue. It’s as if the words are running loose between the synapses in her brain. Her affect is so strange. Something’s seriously wrong with her.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” she says.

I poke the hornet’s nest.

“You were so enraged about Connor having that baby with Sophie.”

She glares at me. “I won’t lie,” she finally says. “I was. If you ever have a husband, and he does that to you too, you’ll feel the same anger. It’s universal, Lee. It’s not a motive for murder.”

She’s baiting me. I can see that now. She wants to talk. Where are those Seattle police officers?

“So you killed her,” I say.

“I said I didn’t.” She frowns at Adam. “He did.”

The air escapes my lungs.

“He couldn’t have,” I say. “He was on the boat.”

Adam’s face is blank. The moment is surreal. Maybe it isn’t real. Maybe it is another bad dream. In some ways, I hope so. Adam might be a liar, but I don’t want to see him behind bars for the rest of his life.

“Adam,” I say, “Mr. Bakker saw you.”

Silence fills the room. I swear I can feel heat rolling off Kristen’s body. She’s about ready to blow. But Adam just sits there in a strange stupor.

“I had a bad feeling about this,” he finally says, “from the very beginning.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

ADAM

We sat at the back table of the Goldfinch Tavern in the Four Seasons. Kristen had just come from work. I didn’t have to make an excuse. Sophie was on a project—at least that’s what I thought—and I did some shopping before we met.

She noticed my Saks bag. “You have good taste,” she said.