“UH.” WHITT SHRUGGED. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know where she fits into all this,” Vada said. “Harry’s personnel file went missing from the records room—so we can assume that Regan is interested in her now. Interested enough to kill two innocent police officers just for a snippet of information on her.”

“It’s so awful.” Whitt rubbed his weary eyes. “She doesn’t deserve this.”

“You sound almost like…” Vada began. But when Whitt looked at her, she blushed and turned away.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” She said. “Like her boyfriend or something. You care so deeply for her. You feel her pain.”

“Of course I feel her pain,” Whitt said. “She’s my friend.”

“You moved all the way across the country for her,” Vada went on.

“I did,” Whitt said. “She needed someone to be with her during her brother’s trial.”

“But you’d only worked one case with her,” Vada said. “You’d only known her weeks. That’s a huge commitment, isn’t it? For someone you’ve just met?”

Whitt hadn’t thought much about the time before Sam Blue’s trial, his decision to leave everything in Perth and transfer to the New South Wales Police Force to be beside Harry when she needed him. The move had seemed to come very naturally, had seemed almost like his only option. The right thing to do. No one had ever asked him to explain it.

“I guess I came because it didn’t seem like Harry had any other real friends,” he said. Only in voicing the words did he realize their sad truth. Yes, he knew Harry to have acquaintances, and she was close in a father-daughter kind of way to their boss, Chief Trevor Morris. There was Tox Barnes, but Barnes was so aloof and weird as to fail to count as being “close” to anyone.

Whitt was about to go on, to defend Harry’s friendlessness somehow by explaining that she took some time to be understood, that she was damaged and volatile but loyal and clever in equal measure. But before he could speak, his phone rang. It gave them both a start. A private number. He picked it up.

“Detective Edward Whittacker.”

“Whitt,” Harry said, “we need to talk.”