I sat in a plastic chair in a police station and read the last words my wife would ever write to me, and the thing that broke me was not the fear in them.

It was the practicality.

Even then, even that frightened, she was still trying to arrange for everyone’s safety — still leaving instructions, still thinking of my father, still telling me to believe our child.

She spent the last clear hours she had protecting the people she loved from the people who were supposed to love them too.

I had spent those same hours out of contact, congratulating myself on a job well done.

Chapter 11 — Believe Her

Novak got an update from the lab while I was still holding the letter, and his face changed, and he took me into a side room before he’d let me hear it.

Behind the mirror in our bathroom, forensics had found a small digital recorder.

Odile had hidden it there — the same careful, frightened foresight, the same refusal to let the truth die with her if it came to that.

Most of what it held I will not set down here; some of it belongs only to Odile and to the court that needed it.