Marcelline flung the door open and lost her wine all over the pavement. The retching made her eyes water, and once they started tears, they didn’t stop. She leaned over the steering wheel and sobbed.

Roy had been teetering on the ledge for a long while. None of that was her fault. He may never have pulled himself away from the drop. But it wouldn’t have been yesterday, and it wouldn’t have been like that.

If she hadn’t sent him to Jonathan’s house alone . . . If she hadn’t told him about the painting . . . Hell, if she’d never let him see her at all . . .

Any of it might have been too much for him. All of it was nearly a guarantee. She should have seen that. She did see it. But he owed her.

Poor Roy.

The regret of it surged in quick cycles of calming down followed by a fresh fall of tears.

In one of the deep, shuddery breaths, the absurdity of it lit up in her like a candle—she was crying over the man who shot her. The ridiculous light of it grew. Priceless. Pathetic. With survival instincts like that, maybe it was always going to end in tears and spewed wine for her.

He shot her. He ruined her face. He nearly killed her.

But that Roy had done it, and that she had been there to have it done to her in the first place, shared a common denominator. Something had brought Roy Dorring and Marcelline Gossard together, in a failure of free will to be sure, but both by the same guide.

Although both she and Roy had been weak in the important moments, distracted by the hope and sparkle of their different wants, Jonathan had set it up, then held her arms away from her throat as she almost bled to death.

If Carly was right, and Roy had already been dead before they dumped him in the ass end of nowhere, that piece of shit had watched over Roy dying, too.

She had to move Roy’s gun to get a handful of napkins from the glove box. The cool weight of the metal left her fingers tingling. It had been years since she’d been to a firing range, and she never much liked the feel of a pistol anyway. She wiped her eyes and mouth.

She put the car in gear and drove back and parked along the curb next to a shrub-topped retaining wall that faced off with Jonathan’s house. A silhouette moved back and forth behind the sheer curtains of the office at the front of the house.

Marcelline took out her phone.

We need to talk. You need to come up with a reason to leave. I’m across the street.

The silhouette behind the curtain stopped walking.

Can’t do it. Not tonight.