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this is Thursday. Come on, Quince, I told you when this started that it was going to demand a lot of my time.”
    “Rainie . . .” He didn’t know how to say it.
    “What?” She finally crossed to him, hands on her hips, voice impatient. He could see her feet now. Bare, no socks. A row of ten unpainted toes. He was a doomed man, Quincy thought. He even loved his wife’s toes.
    “I don’t think you should go out.”
    Her blue eyes widened. She stared at him incredulously. “You don’t think I should go
out
?
What the hell is this? Surely you’re not jealous of Dougie.”
    “Actually, I have a lot of issues with Dougie.”
    She started to protest again; he raised a silencing hand. “However, I know Dougie’s not the real problem.” And just like that, it was as if he’d struck a match.
    Rainie stalked away from him, movements jerky, agitated. She found her socks and lace-up boots beside the sofa, sat down defiantly, and started pulling them on.
    “Let it go,” she said firmly.
    “I can’t.”
    “Sure you can. It’s pretty easy. Just admit once and for all that you can’t fix me.”
    “I love you, Rainie.”
    “Bullshit! Love is accepting, Quincy. And you’ve never accepted me.”
    “I think we should talk.”
    She finished pulling up her socks, then grabbed a boot. She was so mad though—or maybe she was sad, he didn’t know anymore, which was half the problem—that her fingers struggled with the laces. “There’s nothing to discuss. We went to the scene, we saw what we saw, and now we’ll work it like we work it. They were just two more murders, for God’s sake. It’s not like we haven’t seen worse.”
    She couldn’t get the boot on. Her fingers were too thick, too shaky. She finally jammed her left foot in, left the laces undone, and crammed on the right boot.
    “Rainie, please, I’m not trying to pretend to understand how you feel—”
    “There you go again! Another line straight out of the shrink’s handbook. Are you my husband, or are you my therapist? Face it, Quincy—you don’t know the difference.”
    “I know you need to talk about what happened.”
    “No I don’t!”
    “Yes, Rainie, you do.”
    “For the last time, let it go!”
    She moved to barge by him, laces flapping against the rug. He caught her arm. For a moment, her eyes darkened. He could see her contemplating violence. Rainie, backed into a corner, knew only how to fight. Part of him was encouraged to see her cheeks finally flush with color. The other part of him played the only card he had left.
    “Rainie, I know you’ve been drinking.”
    “That’s a lie—”
    “Luke told me about the ticket.”
    “Luke is an idiot.”
    Quincy just stared at her.
    “Okay, look, so I had one drink.”
    “You’re an alcoholic. You don’t get to have one drink.”
    “Well, forgive me for being human. I stumbled, I caught myself. Surely two beers in fifteen years is no reason to call the police.”
    “Where are you going tonight, Rainie?”
    “To see Dougie. I already told you that.”
    “I spoke with him this afternoon. He didn’t know anything about tonight.”
    “He’s a boy, he’s confused—”
    “He also didn’t know about Tuesday night.”
    She stalled out. Caught, trapped. The look on her face broke Quincy’s heart.
    “Rainie,” he whispered, “when did it become so easy to lie?”
    The fire finally left her cheeks. She looked at him for a long time, stared at him so hard, he started to have hope. Then her eyes cooled to a soft gray he knew too well. Her lips settled, her jaw set.
    “You can’t fix me, Quincy,” she told him quietly, then she pulled her arm from his and headed out the door.
    Tuesday, 5:01 a.m. PST
    Q UINCY SAT IN HIS CAR , peering out into the gloom.
    “Oh, Rainie,” he murmured. “What have you done?”

4
    Tuesday, 5:10 a.m. PST
    S PECIAL A GENT K IMBERLY Q UINCY liked to hit the ground running. Five a.m. she was rolling out of bed, years of habit waking her the instant