Emma sank into the pillow, feeling it deflate around her head, the card sliding toward her ear.

Zeb’s words flashed back to her: Dad wouldn’t do that.

“Miss Brighton, do you wish to continue with the concerns you started registering yesterday?”

She stiffened again, staring up at the ceiling. “I . . . No. I got my wires crossed there.”

She heard them shuffle but didn’t dare look at them.

“You don’t think it’s connected to tonight’s events?”

“I don’t think so.” She spoke too sharply. Anxiety had slain any acting skills she’d had in the first place. She didn’t even want to think about the potential consequences of her lies. What choice did she have?

“Well, if you change your mind . . .” He nudged the business card closer, almost poking her jaw.

As they turned to go, Emma propped herself up. “One more thing.”

They paused. Another look flickered between them, perhaps questioning her now-lucid voice and surge of energy. She tried to slide back into her out-of-it act.

“Steph Harlow,” she slurred.

That seized their attention. But Emma’s words receded as quickly as they’d arrived. She recalled Steph’s urgent voice in the darkness, almost drowned by sirens: Please don’t tell the police.

“Is . . . she all right?” she substituted lamely.

“Actually, she disappeared from the scene shortly after you were taken to hospital. We’re still trying to ascertain her whereabouts. Do you have any ideas?”

Emma could remember the maisonette’s address exactly. Could picture it in Steph’s frantic scrawl. She didn’t know what was there . . . but Steph was Freya’s mother. Suddenly that seemed to dwarf everything else, seemed to give her, in Emma’s mind, the right to do whatever she felt she must.

“No,” Emma said. “Sorry, I don’t.”

The officers gazed at her for a few more seconds and then, when they realized she had nothing more to add, walked away.

As soon as they’d disappeared, Emma let herself cry. She kept replaying that moment, the figure turning back under the lamplight, the shock as she’d glimpsed his face.

Zeb.

She’d looked away and then back, as if it might have been a trick, and in that brief window he’d sprinted out of reach. But it had been him. The question was, had it all been him? Eggs and dog shit and parenting books and vicious notes?

Panic was stacking up in her chest. She needed to speak to Zeb. And what was she going to do about the Harlows? What if Steph was in danger and Emma was the only one who knew where she was?