Relief filled up Marcelline’s throat. She could only nod.

“Good. All it will cost you is a little blood. Not that you look like you can afford to lose much more.”

Marcelline closed her eyes. It was work to even lift her lips into a better smile. She should laugh. It was the kind of thing people said as a joke. Why didn’t it sound like a joke?

Samantha noticed. “I’m not kidding, actually. Sorry. I’ll have someone come out to the house to draw a little blood tomorrow. It’ll be okay. We won’t need much.” Samantha emptied a small brown-paper shopping bag of its lunch leftovers and held open the sack toward Marcelline’s shoeless feet. “Put his socks in here.”

Samantha’s grin was adorable, mischievous even. A gray swoon of unreality threatened to tilt Marcelline out of her chair. “Why?”

“Why? Because you’re a missing person. And not just plainly missing. You’re gorgeous and well missed by good, upstanding photogenic people who pay their taxes. That’s why. It’s quite an opportunity. A little mingled DNA on some artfully hidden socks can be very compelling to police and juries. Did you never see anything about the OJ trial?”

“You’re going to set him up? But Owen didn’t do anything to me. I mean, I don’t even know that he would have. I might have overreacted. It might just have been his way of making sure I didn’t know where Jonathan is.”

“You think Owen Haig is all talk?”

Marcelline couldn’t bring herself to say yes, but no would have been close to a lie.

Samantha sighed. “I know it’s horrible and terrible. It’s also not fixable. And, no, I’m not necessarily going to set him up. He didn’t do anything to you, but he didn’t get the chance, did he? Let’s just say that your concerns for your well-being—and your family’s—weren’t ridiculous. He’s humiliated. It’s not safe to make him angry. You’ll have to trust me on that. Seriously.”

“But the socks . . .”

“Right. In our weird world I actually like Owen, for the most part. But he gets in my way. And I get in his. Being able to divert him, should I ever need to, is a gold coin. The police crawling up his ass over a missing person like you?” Samantha laughed, delighted. “I could drop that little bomb for years and it would still play.”

The guilt made Marcelline’s stomach lurch.

“Look. I probably won’t ever do it, but leverage is very important in what Owen and I do. It would probably be just as effective to send him one of the two socks and tell him what it is. It’s worth taking you on as a little side project just for this piece of rainy-day insurance.