Chapter 4: The Bag

I didn't go get my bag.

I went to my room, picked it up and carried it back into the kitchen myself.

Everyone was there now.

Shelby in her robe. The housekeeper. The cook. The driver, with his coffee halfway to his mouth.

Nate by the island with his arms crossed.

I set the duffel on the white marble and unzipped it all the way.

Then I turned it upside down.

Everything I owned came out in one heap.

Three T-shirts. Two pairs of jeans. Prison-issue socks I hadn't replaced yet.

A toothbrush in a sandwich bag. A paperback with the cover torn off.

And, bouncing once on the marble and rolling to a stop against the fruit bowl, a gold band with a small square sapphire.

Shelby gasped.

"I told you," she said. "Nate, I told you she'd do something."

The cook looked at the floor.

Nate didn't move.

He looked at the ring, then at me.

I didn't look at the ring at all.

"What time did you take it off?" I asked Shelby.

"What?"

"You said you left it by the sink last night. What time?"

"I don't know. Nine? I was rinsing my glass."

"Shelby," I said. "Where were you at nine?"

Shelby's face flickered. "Watching TV."

He said nothing.

"You have cameras in every hallway," I said. "You told me so yourself. My room's off the back hall. Pull it. Nine to ten."

"Holly, don't make this worse," Shelby said.

"Pull it," I said again.

Nate took his phone out of his back pocket.

He tapped for a long minute while nobody breathed.

Then his face changed.

He turned the screen so the whole kitchen could see it.

The back hall, black and white, 9:41 p.m.

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