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“Your satisfaction isn’t my problem,” I said. “What do the phone forensics have to do with me?”

“They don’t,” he said. “They have to do with your husband.”

I froze, not even daring to take a breath.

“Lockwood Manning was listed as a contact in both Daniel Palicki’s and Fiona McBride’s phones.”

The walls closed in. The overhead lights seemed to flicker and darken. What was he saying?

“She said she protected him,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Corrine kept saying someone was trying to hurt Lock. That she protected him from someone. She wasn’t making sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. But she said it over and over. Someone was trying to hurt Lock. It’s Corrine’s phone you should check.”

“You can see where this is giving me a problem,” he said. “I’ve got a serial killer out there who leaves silk ribbons as a calling card. The same ribbon around your own wrist. And the man you said gave it to you is somehow acquainted with both the accused killer, one of his victims, and a dead woman at the bottom of that bluff.”

There was a knock on the door. Deputy Lennon poked her head in. “Roy,” she said. “I’m sorry. But you asked me to interrupt you if⁠—”

Roy put a hand up, silencing her. He excused himself and went out into the hall for a moment. When he came back, he sat back down in front of me.

“The hospital called,” he said. “Your husband is waking up.”

A thunderclap went off in my head. Lock woke up. Lock was alive.

“He’s asking for you,” Roy said.

I rose slowly to my feet. “Roy,” I said. “If you had something on me, you’d have arrested me by now. You think I withheld evidence? Charge me. You think I killed Corrine Egan? Charge me for that. But until you do, I’m walking out of here.”

Roy grunted. Then he grabbed his keys off the table. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to him. But you don’t get to talk to him alone.”

FORTY-FOUR

“She shouldn’t be anywhere near him!” Eli was the last person I expected to block my way as we arrived at the hospital. It caused Roy to become my unlikely ally. All six foot seven of him.

Piper sat in a chair outside the examining room. She had her face buried in her hands, sobbing.

“Why are you here?” I asked, nonplussed by Eli’s bluster. Who knows what the cops had told him about me?

“Because we’re his family!” Piper answered for him.

A doctor stepped out into the hallway, carefully blocking my view of the room with his body.

“You’re Mrs. Manning?” he asked Piper.

“She is not,” I said. “I am. What is my husband’s condition?”

He looked to be in his early sixties. Certainly a man who’d seen everything in his career as an emergency room physician. His name tag read Lyle Honeycutt.

“Let’s talk somewhere more private,” Dr. Honeycutt said. He took my arm.

“Lock is my best friend. Whatever you have to say, I’d also like to hear,” Eli said.

“Sorry,” Honeycutt answered. “I can only speak to his patient advocate. You should step over to the waiting room beyond those doors so Mrs. Manning will know where to find you.”