When she’d pressured him into taking the painting from Jonathan, she never stepped past the idea that Roy owed her. He did, it was true. But it wasn’t all that was true about this.

She’d known him for about two hours in the diner, and also for less than one minute, years ago, in an alley while he shot her. He’d been easy to read both times. And he’d been easy to read again, beyond all hope, this afternoon in his truck.

The pain of his life was just a fact of his face. He’d never had anywhere to hide it. Not even in death. Roy had only ever had one expression—the fear of high tide, always in up to his neck, stretching for air.

When all of his troubles were over, even that didn’t give him the dignity of his face back. In the two hours and one minute she’d known him, she never saw what he should’ve looked like.

His mouth had been frozen open in the truck. As if he were wailing. And he was still out there now, a ruin-faced stone until someone found him or until nature forced him loose, then took him apart.

She settled in behind the wheel, hoping the darkness gave cover to her crumbling composure if anyone was watching.

Jonathan wouldn’t be watching, though, the bastard. He wouldn’t risk it, no matter how much he might want to or even need to. He wouldn’t get caught looking out the window to see that she was gone.

Whatever passed for peace of mind to him was impossible to imagine. Her sitting in his living room must have pressed on every fear he’d earned. But he’d kept his balance with barely a flicker of concern. He was a high-wire artist. She would give him that.

She backed out from the driveway, nearly all of her concentration bent on getting to the road. In a normal evening, it would be automatic. Avoiding mailboxes and trash cans was easy when she wasn’t losing her mind. But it took all she had just to focus on lining up the car between the curb and the middle of the road, keeping the margins steady on both sides while she drove away.

She made it a few blocks up the hill before she had to pull over. Her head was pounding, her mouth watering. She veered to the right and stopped in front of someone’s house, jarring the tire against the curb and grinding it along the concrete as she straightened the wheel. She rammed the gear selector into park and let her head fall back against the rest, eyes closed, one loose fist resting against her lips, willing herself not to be sick.

It didn’t hold.