For eight years they had underestimated me, mistaken my quiet for weakness and my patience for consent.

Now I used the last of that misjudgment against the worst of them, holding my face carefully blank while a murderer, sure he was speaking to a frightened widow, narrated his own crimes into a microphone taped beneath my collar.

I thought of Porter recording his message in the dark, coughing, choosing the truth.

I kept Dax talking.

Chapter 15 — The Arrest

Behind me the shed door groaned, and Deirdre stepped into the hard light, soaked through, her gray hair plastered to her skull, standing straight.