“What am I supposed to say about it?” she said, her face flushing.

“Wow, you’ve got real blushing issues. You gotta work on that.”

She tipped her head up angrily.

“What is it we are supposed to talk about?” she said. “Technique?”

“We could. I thought yours was good. You really like to explore with that tongue. Every part of you is a detective, I guess . . .”

“Okay,” she said, turning to the door. “Good-bye.”

“I annoy people,” he said. “Believe me. I’m aware. It’s an effective way to communicate if you don’t have any other options. If you can’t get in through the door, throw a rock through the window. And I think maybe you’re the same way.”

This grounded her for a moment. It made sense, and she was always willing to grant when someone else made sense. He left the door open and moved away from it. She went toward it hesitantly, pushed it open a bit more, and stepped inside. He was sitting on his bed.

“She comes in,” he said.

Stevie tapped the doorframe nervously.

“I think maybe I’m embarrassing you by talking about what we did the other night,” he said. “I actually don’t want to embarrass you. That’s not my goal. Maybe I’m more comfortable talking about that stuff. I guess there are some things I just don’t give a shit about, for the right reasons. I can tell you I liked what we did.”

Her wrists were throbbing. Her pulse was going to make her hands balloon up, maybe explode from the pressure.

“The fact is,” he said, “I liked you from the first moment I saw you, when you looked like you wanted to punch me in the face for just being alive. That probably says something dark about me. And I think you like me because I annoy you. Both of us have real problems, but maybe we should make our weird personalities work for us.”

Stevie had often wondered how these conversations worked, when people talked about feelings and touching and all of the stuff she thought was meant to be kept carefully bottled inside her own personal apothecary. Now someone wanted in, to take the lids off the vials, to peer at the contents. Stevie was unaware that people were even allowed to talk about emotions this frankly. This was not how things happened at home.

She shut the door. Her hand shook as she did it, but that didn’t matter. She took the few, nervous steps to the bed and sat gingerly on the edge. Sitting on his bed. This was new, dangerous territory.

He didn’t move.

“So?” she said. “What do we do?”

“What do you want to do?”

Her eyes were going in and out of focus. She moved over toward him and reached around, putting her hand on the back of his head and pulling him closer. She wondered if he would strain against her hand, if this was all wrong, but his head moved forward. She pressed her lips to his.

This time, the kissing was slow as they delicately balanced on the very knife edge of the bed. Their lips met and they would be together for a minute, then they would both stop and stay where they were for another few seconds, faces together, before doing it again. There was no pressure, no anxiety. It was like they were talking easily through the kisses. Her hand slid down his chest and she felt his heart beating hard. He was stroking her hair, running his fingers up the short strands. He leaned back against the bed, and Stevie rested on top of him gently.

And then, a knock.

“David?” Pix called.

Everything stopped dead. Reality came down with an audible thump. This could not happen again.

“Closet,” David whispered.

Stevie found her legs were wobbly when she went to stand. She stumbled over to the closet and climbed in with a pile of shoes and bags and ski equipment, all jumbled and smelling (not overpoweringly, but still) of use, pants and shirts crowding her head. She shut the door, closing herself in. David greeted Pix.

“You need to go over to the Great House,” she heard Pix say. “Nothing’s wrong, Charles just needs to talk to you about—”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Sure. I’ll come now. My coat’s downstairs.”

Quiet. They seemed to have gone.

Stevie crouched in the closet, her heart thumping, rumpled and a bit overheated, her breath coming fast. She slowed it down, turned on her phone for light, and shone it around the closet space. She looked at his shoes, picking them up, giving them the once-over. All had relatively unworn soles. Stevie had sneakers that had worn straight through the bottoms, and most of her shoes had scuffing to the toes, to the sides, little imperfections she either tried to hide or just accepted. These were new shoes. Replaced regularly. And all name brands. There were dress shoes in here, made of soft leather, with the name inside: ELLIS, OF LONDON. Tennis gear. Skis. Everything confirmed the diagnosis of well off, and not the son of a pilot and the manager of a fertilizer plant, probably. When she heard nothing outside the door, she crawled out of the closet and went to the door. No noise.

She was just in David’s room. Alone.

There is a principle often discussed in murder mysteries. Agatha Christie even wrote a book with the title: Murder Is Easy. The idea is that the first time is the hardest, but once you transgress that barrier, once you take a life and get away with it, it becomes progressively easier each time. Stevie had yet to see anything in her reading that showed that this was necessarily true in real life, though it certainly seemed true that people may commit additional murders in a state of panic. Still, it logically held up. Murder is easy. And going through rooms is easy, especially if the owner of said room is someone who let you in and left you alone there.

And she had so many questions. Who was David, the David with no social media? The guy who kept telling weird lies about his family. The desire to know was like hunger, really—it rumbled, it demanded information.

Maybe she could just have a little look around? Just eyeball the place. There would be time. To walk over to the Great House, meet with Charles, come back—that was a minimum of twenty minutes, even if Charles said very little. And it was probably best she wait in here a minute or two anyway, just to make sure Pix was gone.

Just a little look around.

He had a video game system, lots of computer gear. Good speakers—Stevie had seen the brand advertised. Good headphones. Good everything. His books were haphazardly piled. Subjects: philosophy, game theory, lots of literature, books on how to write (interesting), graphic novels. There was an e-reader on the stand next to the bed. She flipped through the library contents: more graphic novels, lots of sci-fi (David liked a space opera, clearly), books about history. David was a reader. An avid one.

She put the e-reader back on the page it had been on when she picked it up and replaced it. She had a look at his bedside light: an Italian brand, another quality piece. Everything in his room was just a little bit better, from the weight and smoothness of his sheets (she sat down on the bed and gave them a feel; they smelled of him) to the heavy down comforter.

She allowed herself to rest back on the bed for a moment.

What else was in plain view? Police could look at things in plain view when they came inside with no warrant. The room was clean. Not tidy, but generally clean. An effort had been made to keep things in the right place. There was one old Led Zeppelin poster, but Stevie got the impression that it had just been put up as a kind of non-decorating. Get the first object you see, stick it up. The vast majority of the room was a blank canvas, without photos or decorations.