“Then you just go home. You don’t call anyone, don’t snap any pictures. Nothing.”

“Yes,” I said, working hard to keep my composure. “Because I didn’t know—”

“Right, right,” she said. “We get it. So fast-forward to this past weekend. You see the news about the murder at 115 West Oak, and you think, for some reason, that since you dropped him off there last week, Ryan Hooks could’ve been involved.”

I swallowed.

I’d known that this was where things would get dicey, since I couldn’t tell them everything. I bit my lip and nodded. “It seemed like somebody should know that he’d been there just a week earlier, so—”

“Yeah, maybe TMZ,” Detective Greg muttered.

“—so, I texted your tip line,” I said, ignoring him.

Detective Puhl nodded. “Yes, we got that tip,” she said, looking down at a sheet of paper in front of her. “We got a lot of leads about that case, but I have to say, yours was the most”—she raised an eyebrow and looked at the other detective—“entertaining?”

Detective Greg smiled but didn’t respond.

“That should have been the end of it,” Detective Puhl continued, and there was almost something like exhaustion in her tone. “But instead, you’re saying that the same man—the same pop star—broke into your home earlier today and attacked you for no reason at all.”

I squared my shoulders. “The police were at my house this morning. You can ask them—”

“No,” she said. “I’m not doubting you had an intruder, Mrs. Wilson, and I’m sure that was very scary. But I’m asking why you think it might have been Mr. Hooks.”

I bit my lip.

Careful…

I’d drifted in and out of a wine-soaked sleep for hours after the police left, staring at our belongings tossed so carelessly around the living room and asking myself the very same question.

As I’d replayed the events of the past week over and over in my mind, I’d become more and more convinced: it had to be Hooks.

It simply had to be.

I’d finally jumped up, my entire body still shaking, and called a cab to the station.

The thing is, Detective Claire Puhl had looked a lot nicer on TV.

As the wine began to wear off, I realized I didn’t have a good answer, at least not one I could tell them, so I fumbled to make something up.

“I don’t know,” I said, swallowing. “He must have figured out that I was the one who texted your tip line and told you that I’d dropped him off. Was he ever contacted by the police? That’s the only thing I can think of.”