“Thank you for checking.”

“And, um, your prints aren’t on those résumés. Nobody’s are.”

“Ah,” I said. “Like somebody wore gloves.”

He nodded. “We just need to nail down the source of the gun, and we can wrap this up.”

“I see.” I thought a moment. “Can’t you run it through that federal database? What’s it called?”

“IBIS, and we already did. The gun’s never been used in any reported incident.”

“Oh.”

“And the maker of the DIY kit sold thousands of them, but none to Lucy Carter-Jones.”

“Or to me.”

“Or to you.”

“So what else can you do?”

He hesitated, as if wondering how much more he could share with me, then went ahead. “We’re searching her house this afternoon. Looking for a gun safe or ammo or even some metalworking tools.”

“All the things you didn’t find in my apartment.”

“Right.”

“But what if you don’t find them in her house, either?”

He didn’t answer. He turned to the door and put his hand on the knob, but he stopped there. “Even if we don’t,” he said without looking back—he spoke barely above a whisper, and I knew he was confiding something he shouldn’t—“it looks like we found her suicide note.”

He seemed to regret the words as soon as he spoke them. He wrenched the door open and hurried from the room.

I sat, stunned, after he was gone. Lucy left a suicide note? She actually did mean to kill herself?

Wow.

Chapter 18

I can’t do this anymore.

Lucy’s text had landed last night while Barrett was out to dinner with two other couples. He’d glanced at it on his lap while Melanie harangued the waiter about the carb count of every item on the menu. Then he’d pocketed his phone and resumed perusing the wine list. It never occurred to him that this meant her life. His conscience was clear on that point. At the time it was the anymore that puzzled him. Because it was already done. He wasn’t asking her to do any more than to keep her mouth shut about it. He needed to have another conversation with her, obviously, but at the time it also seemed obvious that it could wait until Monday morning.

Now, though, looking at the readout of the text synced through to Ma Belle, he had to wonder—should he have realized? Could he have prevented this awful tragedy?

It was a terrible loss, and he allowed himself a brief moment to mourn her. It may have been a stretch when he’d told the police she was a dear friend, but there was no question she was a valuable employee. There couldn’t have been a more perfect interface with the company’s wide and varied workforce. Her familiarity with Asian culture made her someone the factory workers could relate to; her upper-crust British accent was all it took to intimidate the Creatives and keep them in line; and her no-nonsense efficiency was everything the Admins wanted in an HR director. If only she’d been a little less fastidious. He mourned that as well.