Amanda folded her hands in her lap while she spoke in a calm voice. “He had brown eyes. Pretty eyes, really, which seemed incongruous while he was trying to attack me. He looked clean-cut, like I said, not like a homeless guy or anything.” She pursed her lips while other details came back to her. “His teeth.” She lifted her hand and pointed at her mouth. “They weren’t as nice as the rest of him. Not white. Not like someone who regularly went to the dentist. In fact, I think he had one missing, along the side and near the back of his mouth. That seemed strange. Everything else about him looked well maintained, but not the teeth.”

“Tattoos? Accent? Anything?”

“No. He sure seemed strong, pressing against that door. But maybe he wasn’t as strong as he seemed. I held him off.”

“You’re pretty strong. Remember what you did to that woman at the soccer match.”

“My crowning glory. Knocking down another woman.”

Amanda appeared to be lost in thought, likely trying to summon other details of her encounter with . . . whoever he was. But my mind started down a darker tunnel, one with little light at the end. Amanda had been curious enough to look at my Facebook messages. Curious and insecure during her pregnancy. She spoke about feeling cornered, recognizing that sensation on Samantha’s face.

And she’d gone out the day before when I was supposed to be coming home from work. And hadn’t mentioned it to me until I asked.

Had all of it driven Amanda to pay a visit to Jennifer? And had it gone wrong?

Something hot and choking burned at the back of my throat. I swallowed, cracking the window a little to let some fresh air in.

“Are you hot?” she asked.

“I’m fine. It’s stuffy.”

Amanda studied me, her eyes narrowing with concern and curiosity. Had she read my mind and understood what I’d been thinking? If she had, she didn’t let on. She went ahead, trying to solve the problem.

“I can’t really remember anything else about him,” she said. “You’re right. It was stressful. And fast. But I know what I saw.” She tapped her phone. “Kyle Dornan was not at our door. Not unless he went out and bought some kind of Mission: Impossible mask to hide his identity. We have to tell Rountree,” she said. “We don’t have a choice.”

“You’re right.”

The rain started to fall with greater strength. The wipers were off, and soon the view was obscured by water.