Page 156

“Maybe this is all some misunderstanding,” I say, patting her on the hand.

“How can it be?” Harper’s arms are slumped in front of her, her body hunched over in defeat. She didn’t have to wear a bridesmaid dress, so she’s in a slinky black number, which she told me with defiance when she showed it to me a couple of weeks ago was giving “sexy funeral vibes.”

“I don’t know, Harper.”

“You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I fucked up.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Connor, Shawna...What’swrongwith me.”

“You see the good in people.”

“I get taken advantage of.”

I look into my glass. The half finger of Scotch I haven’t downed yet is glowing under the bar lights. We’re sitting at a mahogany bar on red stools reminiscent of the ones I met Connor on in Italy, and which were so accurately re-created in an early scene in the movie.

I’m not jet-lagged, but it feels like it.

I can only imagine what Harper’s feeling.

“I should’ve seen it coming,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the smart one, remember?”

I laugh, but it’s true. “Even smart people make mistakes.”

She tosses back part of her drink. “Maybe sheisa Giuseppe. She was always apologizing. They grew up in Canada, right? That’s where they shipped those girls after you and Connor exposed the dad. A fitting place for future criminals.”

“Canada’s not Australia.”

“It might as well be in our lives.”

“Okay, fair. But...apologies are not enough to equate to master criminal.”

“Right. But wait, wait, wait...She speaks Italian. She does! I heard her tell Inspector Tucci to shut up in Italian. How does she know Italian?”

“Lots of people know Italian. You can’t go around thinking everyone in your life is out to get you. It’s okay to trust. It doesn’t make you stupid.”

“Soyousay. But why, though?”

“Why what?”

“Why seduceme?”

“I don’t know. But she can’t be a Giuseppe. It doesn’t make sense. She must be involved somehow, but not because of that.”

She rests her head on my shoulder. We sit there like that, under the muted lighting, breathing together as I count out the beats in my head.

After a moment, I feel calmer.

I doubt it makes a difference for her.

She’s going to need time, but we don’t have that much of it.

We need to solve this thing before the storm clears. Because I don’t think I can just go back to my life with a murderer on the loose. Not again.