It came out of some deep, watchful part of me that had, I realized only as I spoke, been quietly noticing things for months — a locked safe Blake had grown strange about, a brother’s warnings I had brushed aside, a marriage that had gone cold in a way I had told myself was ordinary.

All of it surfaced at once, in that sentence, and I heard Blake understand, on the other end of the line, that his careful plan had a witness he had never accounted for.

He had spent months certain that his exhausted, trusting wife noticed nothing.

He was about to learn how wrong he had been.

Chapter 5 — Not the First Time

“How many times, Blake?” I asked.