It was raining — a hard, cold, sudden desert downpour, the kind that comes rarely and comes all at once.

Bruce took off his own coat without a word and draped it over the three girls, tenting it so it covered all of them, and he walked us to his car through the rain with his shirt going soaked and dark across his shoulders.

He drove us that night to his estate outside San Diego, the wipers going, the girls asleep against each other in the back seat within minutes, exhausted the way children are after fear.

I sat in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car in the dark, watching the rain, and I let myself believe — foolishly, it would turn out — that the worst of it was finally behind us.

I kept glancing at him as he drove, this man I had known for two hours. I was trying to find the catch.

Six years with Agatha had taught me that generosity was a loan with terrible interest, that no one did anything for me without meaning to collect, and I kept waiting for Bruce Hall to reveal what this was going to cost.