He did not answer me.

That non-answer, more than anything he said, was the first fact I filed away — the first entry in a case I did not yet know I was building, against a man I had spent four years trying not to fight.

Chapter 3 — I’ve Been Called Here Before

The paramedics arrived within minutes, and one of them — a steady, sharp-eyed man whose name I would learn was Mark Davis — knelt to check Maya’s vitals, and then glanced up at Richard on the porch with a look I recognized, because I had felt the same thing rising in myself.

“Sir,” he said, “did you place a call to emergency services earlier tonight?”

“No,” Richard said, flatly.