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second. ‘Okay, how about this? Maybe something inside your head just finally snapped and that’s why you stabbed him.’
    Winter laughed. ‘Seriously?’
    Mendoza didn’t reply.
    ‘I did not murder Omar. If I had, I would have done it very differently. For a start I wouldn’t have just been sitting there when the cops turned up. And I’d have an alibi. You can count on that. The other thing you could count on is that it would be one hundred per cent airtight.’
    ‘And what am I supposed to think when you go and say something like that?’ Mendoza leant forward. ‘Now, I’m sure you could probably tell me a dozen different ways how you could have killed that cook and gotten away with it. And the reason for that is you’ve thought long and hard about this. Because that’s what you do. You spend your days imagining what it’s like to be a killer. But what if it’s no longer enough just to imagine? What if you decided that it was time to get some first-hand experience? What if you finally decided to cross the line?’
    ‘His name was Omar,’ Winter said quietly. ‘And why are we wasting valuable time here? We should be out there hunting this woman down. That’s why I dragged you out of bed in the middle of the night. She’s a killer, which means our job is to catch her.’
    ‘No, no, no,’ Mendoza interrupted. ‘There is no “we” here. This is your mess, Winter.’
    ‘I did not kill Omar.’
    ‘Fine. Prove it.’
    He lifted his hands up and rattled the cuffs. ‘That’s a little difficult while I’m sat here with these damn things on my wrists.’
    Mendoza settled a little deeper into her seat and folded her arms. Winter dropped his hands and laid them palm down on the table.
    ‘Okay,’ he continued, ‘the good news is that we don’t need to go looking for this woman because she’s going to find us. The last thing she said was that she’d be seeing me again real soon. So, in the meantime, we go through everything we can find on the Hartwood murders. We’ll need to contact the cops up there to see what they’ve got to say. She’s pointed us in that direction with the newspaper, so I say we see where that leads us. And we’ll need to work Omar’s murder as well. I’d be surprised if there’s any direct connection to the woman, but his family deserves answers.’
    ‘There are so many things wrong with what you’ve just said, I don’t know where to start.’ Mendoza reached for her ponytail and wrapped the strands tightly around her fingers, the tips whitening as the blood circulation was cut off. She tugged hard on the hair band to straighten it then held her left hand up in the air, the fingers curled into a fist. ‘Okay, one.’ She slowly straightened the index finger. ‘All of this is based on the assumption that your mystery woman actually exists. Right now, all we’ve got is your word for that. Two.’ The middle finger slowly unfurled. ‘Like I said, there is no “we”. Whatever the hell is going on here, it has nothing to do with me.’
    ‘Come on, Mendoza, I can’t do this chained up in here, and I can’t do this on my own. I need you. And you’ve got to admit that we make a great team.’ He smiled his widest smile. ‘Plus, she does exist.’
    ‘Winter, I’m booked on the noon flight to Vegas, and I fully intend to be on it. Not because I want to take a vacation, but because it’s an order and, unlike you, I follow orders. You want to know the truth? The thought of taking a vacation makes me feel nauseous. Even though it’s only a week, in my opinion that’s still a week too long.’
    ‘Okay, here’s an idea: since you’ve been ordered to take a vacation, why not take it in Hartwood? I’ve heard it’s beautiful up there at this time of year. You could do some walking, read a book.’ He paused and his face lit up with a grin. ‘If you get really bored you could help me investigate a six-year-old murder.’
    Mendoza actually laughed at this. She tried to