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“I’m sorry for involving you in this. It’s the last thing I intended.”

Finn’s smile was sardonic. “Now that I know is the truth.”

I tried to sleep after Finn left.

I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes, listening to the rumble of the surf beneath the building.

I wanted to sleep. I needed to sleep. But I kept seeing Finn’s face as I’d poured out the whole sick, sad story.

I couldn’t not remember how his expression changed from concern and caring to disbelief to professional distance.

He was never going to think of me the same way again. I couldn’t blame him. But it was still difficult.

Regardless of how much Finn deplored my actions, he would try to help, though, and I had finally reached the point of being more grateful for the help than afraid of the consequences.

Last night had been the turning point. Crouched down in the mud and mist, believing I might die in the next few minutes, I’d had an epiphany.

I, too, was tired of the silences and secrets.

I did not want to die. That went without saying. But I also did not want to live without companionship and love and intimacy.

I’d built a good life for myself. I was financially comfortable. I had work I enjoyed and found meaningful. I was liked and respected by my colleagues. Mostly. I had friends and an active social life. I had my dear little cats. I had my health. Most of the time.

None of which changed the fact that I was lonely.

Intensely lonely.

And had been for years.

Security. Stability. Safety.

The three tenets of my adult life. Every choice I’d made since leaving Steeple Hill for college had been made with those three goals in mind. And I’d achieved those goals.

And then some. I’d achieved everything I set out to achieve.

And the payoff was that I was lonely.

Secure. Stable. Safe. Lonely.

Ironically, I was about to lose all of it—with the exception of the loneliness.

It was going to be a whole lot lonelier moving forward.

Once again, I saw Finn’s expression. The realization. The shock. The withdrawal.

He was one of the good guys, though. He’d help me as much as he could.

And once we’d exhausted every possible avenue to delay the inevitable, he’d come and visit me in prison, like he did some of the other felons he felt some affection or responsibility for.

He’d speak up at my parole hearings. He’d help me find work when I got out.

Because there was no question I was going to prison. Hopefully, not for fifteen years. Hopefully, I’d get parole. I did not want to try to rebuild my life in my sixties. My fate would depend on a number of things. But we both knew I was going to prison. Which was still better than being dead.

Either way, I was going to lose everything I’d worked for.

Either way, when this was all over, I would be starting from scratch.

Either way, I was going to lose Finn. Maybe not his loyalty. Maybe not his friendship. But any kind of future of together.

Midway through my revelations, I’d watched him fall out of love with me. And that hurt worse than any slap or punch my father had landed.

My cell pinged a notification and I jumped. Grabbing the phone, hoping it was Finn, I scanned the reminder—scanned it again—and swore.

I was supposed to be taking Grace Hollister to breakfast at nine o’clock.

It was eight-twenty now. I closed my eyes, struggled for control.

What was the point ?

Was there any point to this? Given what lie ahead of me?

No. There was not.

And yet, I was already on my feet, striding into the bathroom, turning the shower taps on full blast.

Grace was a very nice woman and she’d made the trip all the way from the English Lake District. Not solely to have breakfast with me, of course, but she’d wanted to discuss…what they all wanted to discuss: their fucking books, their fucking careers, their fucking marketing budgets.

I sucked in a couple of lungsful of steamy eucalyptus, closed my eyes, and concentrated on how good the jets of very hot water felt on my tired body. My thoughts cleared.

Focus on the here and now. Stay in the moment.

Of course there was a point to this.

W&W was going to do their best to bully Grace into one of their godawful unfavorable contracts, so of course I needed to prepare her.

We’d signed her after she’d written an engaging non-fiction account of her first trip to Britain and subsequent involvement with a former jewel thief (to whom she was still married!) and the hunt for a missing work by Lord Byron.

Oxygen network had even optioned the book.

She was currently working on a well-researched, witty historical mystery series featuring Lord Byron. Unfortunately, W&W felt the historical mystery market was glutted.

So, yes, we absolutely needed to have this breakfast.

I finished shaving, turned off the water, brushed my teeth, liberally applied eye drops, superglued my hair into submission, and hunted for my jeans. Finn had kindly picked my scattered clothes off the floor and tossed them to the sofa. I examined the Levis and realized the knees were caked in mud.

I blinked against the memory of the reason for that, returned to the bedroom, and found a spare pair of jeans.

I pulled on a clean white Oxford shirt—classic N.Y.

male editor vibe: slightly rumpled Oxford shirt, blazer, worn but expensive desert boots, and beat-up messenger bag.

Except I didn’t have the energy to lug around even an empty messenger bag.

I put on my glasses and left the room, half-jogging to the elevator. Stepping inside, I pressed the button for the first level. I glanced at my watch. I was probably going to be about five minutes late, given the likelihood that we’d be stopping at every floor.

Impatiently, I leaned forward to press the close-door button and just before the doors slid shut, a man suddenly slipped through the shrinking gap. He must have thought the elevator was empty, because he jumped. Truthfully, we both jumped. I’d half expected Troy Colby to barge in.

Instead, I recognized Thomas McGregor.

Somehow, I managed not to go completely fan boy.

Like Finn, McGregor was a former cop who wrote highly regarded hardboiled police procedurals.

His books lacked the black humor and compassion of Finn’s.

His themes veered more toward the Shakespearean and the prose…

the prose was gorgeous, complex, lyrical.

Even critics who found his plots silly melted into puddles over his extraordinary mastery of the English language.

“Good morning.” I said politely, pretending that I hadn’t just recoiled like the heroine in a Lifetime thriller trapped in a high-rise with a mad killer.

Granted, so had McGregor. He looked at me, nodded in polite dismissal and stared straight ahead at the control panel.

I’d been reading him for years, but had never managed to meet him before.

His book jacket photos were usually in black and white and, I couldn’t help thinking, were a bit out of date.

He was now about my age, medium height, and stockier than his author photo would lead one to believe.

His hair was brown with reddish glints that I didn’t think were completely natural.

Why do so many men opt for red when their hair begins to gray?

Anyway, his eyes were very bright, very blue.

He sported one of those formidable hipster beards and a nicely tailored blue Harris tweed blazer.

“I enjoy your books very much,” I offered.

He nodded in acknowledgement but continued to stare straight ahead.

The message was loud and clear: Do Not Bother Me.

Or maybe Get Tae Fuck, seeing that he was Scottish.

Anyway, I didn’t take offense. Not all authors are people persons.

In fact, the job practically requires the opposite: creatives who are comfortable living with their own uninterrupted thoughts for hours, days, even months at a time.

Conferences can be especially challenging for that personality type, given that an author’s role at a conference fell somewhere between celebrity and rug merchant.

I wasn’t exactly bubbling with joie de vivre either, so I was happy to shut up and lean back against the wall.

On the fourth floor, three women and a spindly youth boarded, instantly recognized McGregor, and proceeded to tell him at length how much they loved his work. He did not ignore them, but he seemed stiff and uncomfortable. Maybe he didn’t do conferences.

On the third floor, several more people crowded in, clutching their book bags and coffee cups. Cherry, my PA, was among them. She spotted me, and leaned around a short, bearded man to exclaim, “Oh, Keiran! I’ve been trying to text you!”

“Have you?” I pulled my phone out, checked it, and yes, I’d had two texts from her in the last two minutes.

“Damn,” I murmured. “Finn muted my phone this…” I caught her expression, realized what I’d said, and swallowed the rest of it.

Cherry beamed at me. “Oh, yay ! When you skipped his Smoking Gun interview, I was afraid you two—”

I raised my brows meaningfully and she cut herself off, blushing. “Grace has to cancel,” she said quickly.

“What?”

It sounded more indignant than I’d intended, and everyone in the elevator stared at me.

“She’s not feeling well.”

“ She’s not feeling well?”

“Nooo. She was so sorry, but she sounded terrible. She’s definitely coming down with something .”

Our fellow travelers shrank back a couple of centimeters as though terrible was catching. Actually, it was.

I processed this new intel, sighed, and said, “Okay. That’s all right. I’m sorry she’s under the weather.”

I was, and I was also definitely going back up to bed.

Cherry nodded but suddenly gave an evil laugh and whispered way too loudly, “Ariel Newsome was telling everybody in the bar last night what you said to Millie.”

“Oh, God,” I said in alarm.

“No! It was brilliant . I wish you’d been there. After the banquet, we all went down to the lobby bar and our art department and W&W’s art department started doing shots in your honor.”

I stared at her in horror.

“Really,” Cherry insisted. “You’re a hero. You’re our hero.”

I widened my eyes at her and made the time-honored gesture for shut up . Except that gesture is one of zipping the lips and I did a slashing motion across my neck. No wonder she looked confused.

The spindly youth giggled.

We reached the second floor where most of the panels were being held. Everyone scooched over, making way for Thomas McGregor, before piling out in his wake.

“Should we liaison?” Cherry turned back to ask, blocking the doors from closing.

“Huh?”

“Like yesterday. Did you want to get together to go over some things? Is there anything I should know about today?”

“Uh… I’ll send you my notes later. Just, you know, carry on.”

“Do you need me for your Backstory interview?”

“My— Sure. Bring smelling salts.”

She laughed. “And a shot of bourbon?”

“Exactly.” I made a little shooing motion, she stepped back, and the doors closed.

I pressed the button for going up again, pressed it desperately, but of course it had to finish its descent into the bowels of hell.

On the first floor, the doors slid open and Hayes Hartman stepped inside.

So, in fact, I really had descended to the bowels of hell.

Hayes stared at me with his glittery blue eyes and took his cell phone out.

I didn’t have the energy for Mr. Hartman, but I also couldn’t get behind the adolescent rudeness of pretending another person wasn’t standing three feet away.

I said, “Congratulations on the Edgar.”

Hayes gave a short laugh. “Thanks.” He continued to stare at his phone.

I said, “Hayes, have I done something to offend you?”

He made a wondering expression and theatrically gasped, “Gosh. What could you have done, Keiran?”

“I honestly don’t know. Have we even met before?”

He glared. “You don’t remember Bouchercon in New Orleans?”

“I remember Bouchercon in New Orleans.”

“But you don’t remember me?”

“I—” No was clearly the wrong answer. Did I remember him? Maybe he’d looked different? People changed. Granted, B’con NO had only been two years ago.

I was still trying to think of a diplomatic way to say not really , when he demanded, “You don’t remember holding one-on-one feedback sessions?”

I did not. Which is to say, I remembered having one-on-one feedback sessions with about six authors that weekend. Not a lot, compared to how many I’d conducted back in my junior editor days, but multiply that by several events a year multiplied by a decade?

Yes, regrettably, the endless parade of authors and their five-page submissions tended to blur together in my mind.

Hayes said, “That’s ironic. Given that the book you trashed just won the Edgar.”

I echoed, “The book I trashed ?”

I was pretty sure I’d never trashed anyone’s book. Trashing books is typically performed by rival authors.

His lip curled.

I said, “I’m not infallible. My opinion is informed, but in the end it’s just another opinion. I’m glad the book did well for you.”

“Sure, you are.” He went back to scrolling through his phone.

It was exasperating, to say the least. There had to be more going on here than a forty-five-minute critique he’d requested two years ago.

I gave him a look of disbelief, shrugged. What more was there to say?

Hays murmured, “You may have Scottie snowed, but you don’t fool me.”

Scottie.

Okay. Now I got it.

Not as complicated as I’d imagined.