The room seemed to empty of sound.
Because there was one thing I had not told anyone.
One case from my years at the attorney general’s office.
One sealed investigation.
One witness who disappeared.
One file I had copied before being ordered to forget it existed.
Blackroom had not entered my life through Grant.
It had been there before him.
And suddenly I understood the worst possibility of all.
Maybe Grant had not chosen me because I was easy to control.
Maybe he had chosen me because someone told him to.
Detective Voss lowered the phone.
“Clara,” she said carefully, “what did you do before you married Grant?”
I looked toward the dark window, where my reflection stared back at me with bruised eyes and a stranger’s face.
Then I whispered the name of the case that had ended my career.
