Then my cousin’s husband approached, looking deeply uneasy.

“Evelyn,” he said.

“There are two gentlemen asking for Marcus.” Marcus turned.

Near the ballroom entrance stood two federal agents, unhurried, patient, exactly where the timeline had always been going to place them.

And Chloe, beside him, whispered one word.

“Run.” Marcus looked at her in disbelief, and in that look, in the specific betrayal of a woman telling him to flee alone while she stayed behind, I understood that whatever had existed between them was already, in that instant, finished.

And I felt, watching it, not satisfaction exactly, but a kind of clarifying recognition, because I was watching the truth of their relationship reveal itself in a single word. Run. Not we’ll fix this, not I’m with you, not even what do we do, but run, an instruction issued to him alone, a severing, the sound of a person cutting loose the anchor that was about to drag her under.