It did not occur to them that the shrunken creature on the mattress could be wearing a wire, could be the bait in a trap, could be, at that very moment, the most dangerous person either of them had ever underestimated.

Cruelty makes people careless that way.

They had told themselves Sidonie was nothing for so long that they’d come to believe their own story, and their own story was the thing that convicted them, spoken aloud, into a recorder taped over the heart they’d assumed they had stopped.

Chapter 23 — The Last Question

In the van, Ellard sat with headphones on, and when he heard Tamsyn say that about Quenby he drove his fist into the console, tears streaming, and the detective beside him held his shoulder and kept him in his seat.

Inside, Sidonie asked the last question, the one the officers needed.