She stopped.

But it was already out, hanging in the air of the study, and the whole room had heard it.

Because no one had told her what was in that folder.

No one had said the paper was a confession, or that it had been signed under threat, or how it had been obtained at all.

She had just described, in her own panicked words, a crime whose details only its author could have known.

The officer’s pen had stopped moving.