What did he want? It was the same question she asked the last time. He never knew what he wanted. Or, rather, he did—to have her come into his office while he replayed the fantasy of changing their last argument two years ago. He would retrace his steps all the way back to her apartment and awaken to her kissing him in bed. The impossibility of it washed over him, an unexpected grief. He took a deep breath. “I can’t see.”

“See what?”

“Remember when we were together, and I got migraines? I had those things in my eyes?”

“The dead spots? You called them something—”

“Scotoma. That’s what’s happening now.”

“So what do you see?”

“A bright light. Growing and moving across my eyes. It’s like…flickering.”

“It’s there now?”

He blinked and looked. For an instant he saw her, gripping her purse strap—a familiar sign of impatience. She was always smarter, quicker, three steps ahead. He remembered the sexual energy of having all that intelligence waiting for him. “The light was there a minute ago. It alternates with this other thing. Like a blind space I can’t see through. The space blocks out the middle of my sight.”

“Shouldn’t you go to the ER?”

“I don’t have time. Truro’s given us a deadline to make an arrest. We’ve got two and a half hours.”

“So, you’re kidding, right?” Kate pulled her hair away from her face. “Deadline or no deadline, you can’t see, and you’re driving a car?”

“We’re close to the end on this investigation. I can’t stop.”

“You have a suspect in the Elise Durand homicide? You can make an arrest?” She was suddenly a lawyer again, all business.

“I can’t say any more. But we’re close.”

Kate rechecked her phone. “In that case, I have to go. Why’d you call me?”

“I wanted to talk to somebody…you.”

“Now I remember why we’re not together.” Kate sat in front of Mahler, in the chair Susan Hart had left two minutes earlier. “How much medication have you taken? When was the last Imitrex?”

“Couple hours.” Mahler spread pill packages on his desk. “I’ve taken two hundred milligrams today.”

“Take a hundred more and another four hundred of the ibuprofen.”

“You want me to OD?”

“You want to be able to see?”

Mahler cut apart the packages and swallowed the pills.

“Drink some black coffee,” Kate said. “I’ll get a cup from the break room.”

Mahler heard the parental tone in her voice. She was taking care of him. If he needed any confirmation of how far they were from their old intimacy, it was there in her solicitude.

When Kate returned, she put a paper cup in Mahler’s hand.

Mahler tasted the coffee. “You’re going to miss your appearance.”

“I texted Pat and asked her to take care of it.”