63

Izzy’s life has divided into two.

Two days ago, she and Nick were standing in the kitchen, looking at the back door. Three weeks since the break-in, her diligent, methodical husband still hadn’t reported it to the police, as he’d promised to do. ‘The thing is …’ he said, biting his lip.

‘I know,’ she said.

The thing was, if he reported the break-in, it would all unravel. They’d look into her father’s case. And they’d see it. Files checked out. Things looked up on systems. Every piece of information that he’d found for her. Everything he’d done for her. He’d lose his job. Maybe worse. It was an imprisonable offence, what he’d done: he had googled it.

‘So, what do we do?’ she says. ‘We deal with it ourselves?’

‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘That’s all we can do.’

She had stared at the tap, glinting in the morning sunlight, as he had said it. But it wasn’t the only thing they could do, was it? He could come clean. It was easy to think, to expect. Harder to actually do, she knew.

Besides, running parallel to that was Izzy’s other life. The one where she was still seeing her father, without Nick’s knowledge. The one where she was on the verge of figuring it all out.

But, she thought, looking at the back door, its brand-new lock: she was running out of time.

Somebody was trying to stop them. Somebody was coming for them.

And that’s why she does it. The second he leaves the house to go to his sister’s early on Saturday morning.

She opens the lid of his laptop, types the password, and within moments, all of the information Nick has access to as a police analyst is accessible, right in front of her.

She looks for the CRIS icon on his desktop, but that’s when she sees it: the folder.

Name: Gabriel.

She opens it, not thinking of what it means. Not wanting to think.