Chapter 11: The Cover

Boone slept with his hand on my hip.

I did not sleep at all.

I lay in the dark, looking at the window and the slice of river through it, and I went back to the beginning.

I had left work a little before six.

Winona's text had come in while I was still in the locker room.

I sat up carefully and found my phone on the nightstand.

The message was still there.

"Heard you're off early! Come home through the FRONT door tonight, the alley's blocked on Thursdays. Dinner's at 7:30, don't be late! Trent says hi."

I read it six times.

Dinner was at seven-thirty.

My shift should have ended at seven, and I would have walked in after seven-thirty.

Instead I had been sent home an hour early, and I had walked in at a quarter to seven.

Exactly early enough to find them in bed, with the camera already set up.

My stomach went cold.

"Boone," I said.

He woke instantly, as he always did.

"What is it?"

"Who told you the alley is blocked on Thursdays?"

He sat up.

"Nobody. It isn't. The Crows park along the front of Rooster's, because the alley is too narrow for the bikes."

"Then why would Winona say it was?"

"I don't know."

"She told me to come in through the front door," I said. "Not the alley. She told me the alley was blocked."

"Laney."

"The alley is where I always go in. It's closer to my stairs. It lets out right at the bus stop. I have used that door for three years."

He was very quiet.