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“Not just follow, I think I love her.” Ruth, forgetting to be ornery, turned back to Shona. “No one ever quotes the middle of my poems.”

“No.” Shona’s eyes were bright, her voice light as she leaned across the sticky table toward Ruth. “It’s only the beginning and end that most people remember. I do too, but the guts, the heart of your works, that’s what I love best. From the Public school to the private hell / of the family masquerade / where could a boy on a bicycle go—”

“When the straight road splayed.” Ruth finished the quote from her own poem, stroking the feathers on Rosa’s small head as she spoke.

“How do you know him?” Shona jerked her head toward Armand.

“He’s a neighbor.” Ruth looked at him to make sure he understood what she said next, suspecting rightly that while his hearing had improved, it was far from perfect. “And a friend. How do you know him?”

“He killed my mother.”

Ruth’s brows shot up. It took her a moment to realize this young woman was not kidding. And Armand was not denying it.

“Well, that explains most of your posts,” said Ruth.

“I’ve spent my adult life trying to get back at him.”

“Choosing to meet here is a good step,” said Ruth.

Shona smiled.

Armand realized he’d never seen her smile. Well, that was not totally true. The very first time he’d laid eyes on her, when he’d entered their squalid home with a warrant, the little girl was holding her mother’s hand. And smiling up at him.

Her face, her whole being, radiated happiness and trust. This was a child raised in a crack house, by a prostitute who’d murdered her dealer. But, more than that, this was a child raised with love. Profound, all-encompassing love. And, with it, trust. She knew if she was holding her mother’s hand, she was safe.

Until …

In that moment, when he’d arrested her mother for murder and gently broken that grip, the smile had been wiped off Shona’s face, to be replaced by confusion. Then fear. And then, later, rage. And hatred. And finally contempt.

Shona Dorion had become a journalist. And a very good one. An investigative journalist, she was relentless in pursuit of the entitled, the bullies, those who took advantage of the vulnerable and broken. She had her own site, with hundreds of thousands of followers. Her emblem was the raised finger. And her main targets were those in power. Her favorite target was the man who’d arrested her mother. The senior Sûreté officer she held responsible for her mother’s suicide in detention just days later.

Here was an old white cop who held so much power she felt in her bones he must be corrupt, though she hadn’t been able to find anything on Chief Inspector Gamache. But that hadn’t stopped her from hurling insulting, bordering-on-abusive questions at him in news conferences. Ones that always had some margin of truth. Like calling him a coward because he’d survived the hit-and-run, and Charles Langlois had not.

“You saved yourself,” she’d shouted from the back of the hastily called conference. “How can we trust the Sûreté when its senior officers protect themselves first?”

It was in that moment, when Armand had seen the rage and satisfaction in Shona Dorion’s eyes, and the discomfort of his colleagues and even the other journalists, that he’d made up his mind.

He needed an ally outside the Sûreté. Someone smart, connected, courageous, unrelenting, who could dig into things without setting off alarms. He needed someone no one would suspect could possibly be working with him.

He needed Shona Dorion.

And so, months ago, before the events in the water-treatment plant, he’d invited her to this very café to ask for her help. She’d agreed, volunteering at Action Québec Bleu, the organization where Charles Langlois had worked, to find out what she could.

Though she made it clear it was a limited truce. Once their work together was over, he was again in her crosshairs.

“So, what’re you doing here?” Ruth asked. “Why did you agree to meet him?”

The old poet looked from one to the other. It was clear that if there was an entente between them, it was not exactly cordiale. Once it was over, they would return to where they had been.

Hunter and hunted.

“What do you know about FEDS?” Shona asked.

“Feds?” said Ruth. “Can’t say—”

“I was asking him.”

“Right.”