He kept on reading in a monotone. “—silent. Anything you say can and will be used—”

“I tried to stop her!”

His partner left the room again and went into a huddle with two newly arrived uniformed officers. The three of them went through the revolving doors to the street.

“Yes, I understand my rights,” I said when the officer was done reading. “I waive them. I’ll tell you everything. I tried to stop her.”

“Wait here.”

He exited the room, but he didn’t go far. He stopped and stood just outside the door. He was standing guard, I realized. He was standing guard over me.

Chapter 2

The principal residence of J. Ingram Barrett, Jr., was in Rye, a classic white Colonial, three stories tall, its facade uplit with a dozen well-positioned landscaping spots that made it look like the star of the street. Another set of lights shone on the fountain in the middle of the circle drive that looped around to the front entrance. Thanks to a submersible heater, the water cascaded all through the winter.

In the master suite on the second floor, Barrett slept in a California king with his phone under his pillow. The phone was equipped with a bed-shaker ring, like those in alarm clocks for the deaf. This allowed him to receive middle-of-the-night phone calls without disturbing Melanie, asleep on the far side of the bed. Running a company with production facilities in Southeast Asia meant he often received middle-of-the-night calls, and Melanie wasn’t pleased when it happened. As much as she enjoyed the income that came with his position as senior vice president and general counsel of CDMI, she resented any reminder that he had to work for it.

The phone shook him awake, and he pulled the blanket over his head before he looked at the screen. The caller wasn’t on the other side of the globe. It was Jack Culligan, and since he was head of corporate security for CDMI, a call after midnight had to mean a crisis.

Barrett slipped out of bed and stole into his separate bath and through to his dressing room before he answered. “I’ll call you back,” he whispered, and disconnected.

He left by the other door directly into the hall and past the four empty bedrooms that nominally belonged to his children, though they seldom occupied them. He trotted down the helical staircase and skidded when his foot met wet floor at the bottom. “God damn it,” he snarled as he caught himself on the newel post of the banister.

The maid was on her hands and knees scrubbing the travertine floor tiles in the foyer. “Sorry, mister. So sorry!” She crouched back on her haunches and cowered behind her upflung arms.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said. He would have preferred the cleaning to be done while he was at the office, but he knew that Melanie ordered the wet work to be done during the wee hours of the morning so as not to interfere with any of her activities during the rest of the day. “Relax,” he told the maid. “I’m not mad.”