“The gun fired.”

“For a second I didn’t know what happened. The phone was still lit up on the floor, and then she was on the floor, too, with her eyes wide open and a hole in her face and everything behind her splattered with blood. I think I screamed again. And then the battery died and everything went black.”

I closed my eyes as the scene looped through my memory. As terrifying as the fight was, as much as Lucy’s crazed animal eyes haunted me, it was even more frightening to be plunged into darkness, alone in the cage with her, while the roar of the gunshot reverberated through my skull.

“Then what did you do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing. I should have checked for a pulse, I guess, or given her CPR? I don’t know. I guess I was in shock. I pressed myself back into the other corner and stayed there until I heard the elevator start up. Until the doors opened.”

There. I’d told the whole story now. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Cruz powered down the tablet, and the TV screen went black, a clear signal that we were done. I’d been holding my back straight the whole time, but now I let my spine relax.

“So here’s my question,” Riley said.

I turned a startled look his way and sat up straight again.

“Why didn’t you call 911 yourself? On your own phone? The one we found in your purse.”

“Oh. That? It’s a pay-as-you-go, and I’d forgotten to top it up.”

“Why didn’t you top it up right then? You had a signal. All you had to do was add some money, and you could have kept the line of communication open until help arrived.”

“I guess I didn’t think—”

“And why are you carrying a burner phone anyway?”

“A—what?”

“You know what a burner phone is. Disposable. Anonymous. Untraceable. The criminal’s best friend.”

“It’s nothing like that—”

“Then you must be on that dating app—what d’you call it—Timber.”

“Tinder,” Cruz quietly corrected him.

I felt my face flush. Cruz’s questioning had been neutral, almost gentle. He was the good cop, and now Riley was stepping in to play bad cop. “I’m not on any dating app,” I said. “I’m married.”

“So what’s the burner for? Drug deals?”

“No!”

“And where’s your real phone?”

“I don’t have—” I checked myself before I started to shout. “Look—” I checked myself again. For five years shame had kept me from ever disclosing my financial situation to anyone, but suddenly I could see that it might work to my advantage. Besides, if they hadn’t already run a credit search on me, they soon would. “You can’t get a real phone without credit,” I said finally. “And I don’t have any. So I use a pay-as-you-go. That’s all there is to it.”

Both detectives leaned in at that. “You’re saying you’re broke?” Cruz asked.

“Worse than broke, I’m drowning in debt. Student loans, a mortgage deficiency judgment, credit card debt. So, yes, I’m in some financial difficulty. Or I was, until I got this new job.”