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‘You’re more nervous than I am,’ said Alexandra.

Her client sat beside her, sipping from a half-gallon bottle of water. Kate had noticed that whenever she was with Alexandra, the woman nearly always had a

big bottle of water close at hand, which she poured down her throat every five minutes. She was the most hydrated person Kate had ever met. As Alexandra drank from the bottle, Kate noticed the slight tremor in her client’s arm. The heel of Alexandra’s boot clicked on the floor tile in triple time.

Bloch leaned against the opposite wall. Cool, nonchalant, and switched on.

Nothing escaped Bloch’s notice. She was like a machine. Everything around her

was data to be absorbed and perhaps noted. Never forgotten. Bloch kept looking

between Kate and Alexandra.

‘Just keep cool. Tell the truth,’ said Bloch.

Alexandra nodded. Took another drink.

Kate nodded and bit the nails on her right hand.

Bloch was stone.

The door to Kate’s left opened and a man in a suit came out. He greeted them, introduced himself as a licensed polygraph expert by the name of Carter Johnson, and invited them inside.

The room had no windows. One corner desk was lit with a lamp, and apart from an area no bigger than ten feet either side of the lamp, the room was in darkness. Beside the lamp sat a laptop and a desktop computer with two screens

above it. Next to the desk was a chair facing into the room, its back to the wall.

Johnson beckoned Alexandra to the chair and began to attach monitors to her thumb, arms, forehead, and neck.

‘I’m just here to observe,’ said a voice in the dark.

Kate located the source of the voice and saw one half of Wesley Dreyer’s face illuminated by the glare from his cell phone screen.

‘I didn’t agree to you being here,’ said Kate.

‘You never said I wasn’t permitted to attend, either. I’m here now. I won’t get in the way. I’ll be in the corner. Quiet as a mouse,’ said Dreyer.

As Kate became more accustomed to the gloom, she saw a bank of chairs in the opposite corner of the room. Kate and Bloch sat together, watching Alexandra settle herself. Taking deep breaths through her nose, and exhaling through her mouth. Long and slow. Then short and fast. She stretched her neck,

closed her eyes.

Alexandra was ready.

The examiner, Johnson, explained he was going to ask her some questions to get a baseline response.

‘Are you Alexandra Avellino?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you have blonde hair?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you live in New York?’

‘Yes.’

As she answered the questions, she stared straight ahead, and kept as still as she could. The only movement came from her fingers as they stroked a leather