the posture of her body had changed, shoulders loose now that sweetness no longer served her.

Ramos asked, ‘Did you lock the blinds and request no interruptions before you attacked Michelle Miller?’

‘No.’

Marisol spoke quietly.

‘She did ask us not to disturb the room for twenty minutes.

She said Mrs.

Miller had finally fallen asleep.’

The respiratory therapist nodded from the doorway.

‘And when we came in after the alarm spike, the blinds were closed.’

Audrey looked from face to face, seeing the room turn against her one witness at a time.

Justin said, ‘Tell me one thing true.

Was any of it real?’

For a second he thought she might try one last performance.

She didn’t.

Instead she gave him a tired, almost irritated look, as if he were being sentimental at the worst possible moment.

‘I liked you,’ she said.

‘You were easier than most.

But you were too careful, and she kept poisoning you against me.

I was tired of waiting.’

Michelle’s fingers tightened around Justin’s wrist before he realized he had stepped forward.

‘No,’ she whispered.

He stopped.

That was how she had always saved him, even now.

Not by matching violence with violence, but by keeping him on the side of himself he could live with tomorrow.

The black phone lit again on the blanket.

Another message from D flashed across the screen.

Airport 6:40.

Bring both passports.

Ramos held up a hand.

‘No one touches that phone.’ She turned to one of the officers at the door.

‘Call it in.

I want units at the Hudson Crescent Hotel, room 1807, and at departures.

Daniel Voss may already be moving.’

Audrey went still.

Too still.

That, more than anything, told Justin the message mattered.

Ramos read the number from the lock screen and relayed it to dispatch.

Then she looked back at Audrey.

‘You can help yourself by staying quiet now.’

‘You have nothing,’ Audrey said, but the confidence had gone out of her voice.

‘We have a victim, an eyewitness, corroborating hospital staff, false identity records, hidden documents, a suspicious phone, a husband you forgot to mention, and an attempted suffocation in a monitored medical room,’ Ramos said.

‘I like our starting point.’

When uniformed police arrived, Audrey tried one last time to twist the scene.

She pointed at Justin.

‘He assaulted me.

He threw me into the cabinet.’

‘After I saw you with a pillow over my mother’s face,’ Justin said.

The officer taking statements glanced at the red marks on Michelle’s wrists, then at the pillow on the bed, then at Audrey’s expression.

He kept writing.

They placed Audrey in handcuffs at the edge of room 412.

Even then she managed one final venomous look at Michelle.

‘You should have died before he got back.’

The words sealed whatever shred of uncertainty remained.

Michelle closed her eyes for a moment, not in fear, but in exhaustion.

Justin thought his own heart might split open from the force of what he had almost lost.

Two hours later, while Michelle slept under heavier observation and an officer remained outside her room, Ramos returned with the first pieces of the collapse.

Daniel Voss had been stopped at the airport carrying two passports under different names, a one-way ticket to Grand Cayman, and a flash