I scrambled to call Elena Ackerman. She picked up on the first ring, wearing a scowl. "Oh, for God's sake. Not you again. I know what you're going to ask me. No, I haven't seen -- "

"Daniel." I suspended my tabphone in the air. "We'd like to know the whereabouts of your husband, ma'am."

Her frown deepened. "Daniel? He's right here."

She turned around in the home office, taking the camera with her. Desks span and merged into white sofas in the background. When she stopped moving, Daniel was behind her on an office chair. "There he is."

He came over, his expression relaxed. "Inspector."

"Sir, you appear to have misplaced your tabphone." I held my hand out, and Alex passed it to me in the tissue. I raised the device for Daniel to see.

"Oh, yes, I've been missing that all evening. Where was it?"

"At the scene of an attempted murder."

They both stared at me.

At last, Daniel said shakily, "I don't know anything about that."

"We're putting your flat on lockdown. Alex, tell Laney to take some PRBs over."

"Now, hold on a minute," Elena said. "Just what do you think -- "

"This is non-negotiable, Mrs Ackerman. Don't go anywhere." I ended the call.

Dixon strode back in with Gem behind him. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and she plopped down at the kitchen table. Dixon stood behind her. Cassia and Sebastian stayed together at the side of the kitchen. Alex finished his call to Laney beside me.

I addressed Dixon. "Sir, we've found Daniel Castle's tabphone here at the crime scene. We're putting the Castle-Ackerman duplex on lockdown. I want to go over there and ask Daniel how his device arrived at the scene of an attempted murder -- and to look for any subtle signs of Maxx Ackerman."

"But is the murderer Maxx?" Sebastian said, looking at the tabphone.

Alex set about cracking Daniel's password, and I watched him absently. Daniel had certainly been eavesdropping on us earlier when we'd interviewed Elena: a man could not claim he'd been about to open a door and enter the room when his hands were still in his pockets. And he hadn't been wet, even though it had been raining outside. He probably hadn't gone for a walk at all.

But lots of people would eavesdrop if the police came to talk with their partner. Maybe he'd been feeling nosy. Maybe he'd been feeling protective. After all, although he and Elena were not conventionally head-over-heels in love, they were something. A business partnership, a partnership in bed, a family.

"I don't see any motives for Daniel," I said. "I think Maxx went back to the Castle-Ackermans sometime this afternoon or this evening. Tonight, he left again to kill Gem, and as he no longer has his own tabphone, he brought his step-father's with him."

"Why?" Cassia asked. "What would he need it for?"

"To read romance novels on the tram journey," Alex said.

"What?" I turned to him.

"Only one application is running in the background. Daniel is clearly tidy when he uses his tabphone -- he shuts all his apps down properly. But whoever brought this with them tonight isn't so tidy. They've left Xplora Books running, and when you load it, you see this..."

I leaned over his shoulder as he opened Xplora Books. A saucy romance cover flashed onto the screen before fading into text.

"Um, I can't really picture Maxx reading romance novels," Gem said.

Alex looked at me. My stomach sank. "I know someone who I can picture reading them. In fact, I've seen her reading them before."

"Who?" Dixon asked.

"Lynn Castle-Ackerman. But I don't understand -- she doesn't fit into this."

Dixon frowned. "Where was she during the murders?"

"On Thursday morning," Alex said, "she was at home, asleep. And she told us that on Monday night, she rode a tram around the city and back home again."

Sebastian leaned against the counter. "She wasn't riding the tram aimlessly, was she?"

"Sort of," I replied. "She told us that she was supposed to be meeting her boyfriend, but he broke up with her before she could reach him. So she stayed on the tram and eventually rode it home."

Gem perked up. "Oh, who was the boyfriend? That's some gossip I've never heard about the Castle-Ackermans before!"

"I have no idea. She never did meet him that night, so it didn't seem important."

Dixon's eyebrows rose.

"I'll look at her Xplora page," Alex said.

He scrolled down Lynn's page, and I leaned closer to watch him. There were no photos of her with another male. No mentions that she'd entered or left a relationship.

I frowned. "Damn, she's probably deleted everything."

"I can check," Alex said.

I wasn't even going to question how. While he worked, I strolled over to the opposite cupboard in search of another chocolate bar. The others shifted restlessly.

"No," Alex said a minute later.

I turned around, chocolate in hand. "No?"

"She hasn't deleted anything. Ever. There's nothing to see." Alex tapped the tabphone screen. "It's like he never even existed."

The magnitude of his words took a moment to sink in.

Dixon was the first to address the obvious. "Could she have made the boyfriend up?"

Uncertainty balled in my stomach. "She has told us small lies before. She claimed that she was a student at Socrico University when we first met her, then later admitted she wasn't."

Dixon looked unimpressed. "She's a known liar, but you didn't check whether her boyfriend was real?"

"The existence of her boyfriend doesn't matter, sir! He isn't part of her alibi."

Cassia pushed herself off the kitchen counter. "Only because she said they'd broken up. Why would she end the fantasy?"

"If she hadn't said that to us, he would have been part of the alibi." I dragged a hand through my hair. "We would have asked for a name and an Xplora page number so that we could contact him, and she would have been forced to admit the truth."

"But she must have told her family that she'd broken up with him the night Zoe was murdered, not the morning afterwards," Alex said. "When we first met Jason, he told us she'd been crying all evening and all morning. She'd been pretending to be devastated as soon as she got home -- but she didn't know that she'd need to give us an alibi then."

Unless, of course, she had.

"Does anyone know what tonight's intruder looked like?" Dixon looked between me and my sister.

Cassia shook her head. "No. They were out of the flat too quickly."

And all I'd registered was the ski mask, the knife, and my gun.

"So you can't even confirm they were male?" Dixon asked.

"No, sir," I said. "It's possible they were a man; it's possible they were a woman."

Gem sat up straighter. "Wait -- why would Lynn want to kill Zoe, Bryony, and me? You said we were all linked to Maxx, not Lynn."

I strode towards the door. "I suppose we'd better go and ask her."

***

Three PRBs were stationed outside the Castle-Ackerman duplex when we arrived. DC Laney was standing with them. "The flat's on lockdown, ma'am. I've seen Elena, Daniel, Lynn, Jason, the baby, and the babysitter to be sure."

"Good work, Laney," I said.

She'd entered herself into the doorbell system, so she was able to scan us in. As we stepped inside and I shut the door behind us, I realised how silent the duplex was. Dead silent.

I glanced at Alex. He shook his head and led the way down the hall, careful to tread quietly. I followed, drawing my pistol and holding it behind my thigh. There was something about the air that was making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

Alex pushed open the living room door, both hands empty. He stepped over the threshold -- and stopped in his tracks.

I peered around him. Elena, Daniel, and Jason were sitting on the sofa. None of them looked up at us. They were watching Lynn.

Maxx Ackerman was on his knees in front of her, facing his family. Lynn was holding a knife to his throat.

She turned her head as we entered, her eyes cold. "Stay exactly where you are! Don't move, don't shout...or I'll slit his throat."

***

We stood in shocked silence for a moment.

"Lynn," I said, "don't do this."

Maxx whimpered like an animal, his eyes closed. Lynn stroked the knife across his throat.

"You're not surprised." Her voice was calm. "You realised it was me. How did you realise it was me?"

"You left your father's tabphone at the crime scene," Alex said.

I glanced at Daniel. He, Elena, and Jason were still motionless with shock.

"Yes: a decoy," Lynn replied. "I'd lost the round, and I wanted to confuse you."

"Xplora Books was still running in the background. Your choice of reading material gave you away."

Her face twisted into a scowl. "Damn it! Nothing has gone my way tonight. Well...until now." She glanced down at Maxx. "This is just where I want him to be."

"You killed Zoe and Bryony," I said, trying to direct her attention away from the knife. Beads of sweat were forming on Maxx's forehead.

"Obviously. At first, it was only going to be Zoe. I waited a long, long time to get her off the scene. When I realised she was arguing with Maxx on Boxing Day, I knew the time had come. There was something so satisfying about following her and running this blade across her throat...such a release at last. I experienced the same feeling with Bryony Gold." She smiled. "You handed that murder to yourself on a platter, by the way. I didn't know Maxx was having an affair until you announced it in front of me."

My throat tightened. I swallowed forcefully.

"I tracked Bryony's tabphone," Lynn said, "followed her, slit her throat. I thought it was all over. But when you came here yesterday, you dropped another name: Gem Robinson!

"There's a thrill about killing, you know, and I've found that I have a knack for it. But so far, no one had seen me perform. So I invited an audience; sent you a clue from Maxx's Xplora account. I wanted you to see me kill your friend...but never mind. Now I have Maxx instead."

She smiled and stilled the knife, pressing the sharp edge steady against his throat again. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"Please don't hurt him," Elena whispered. "Please."

Lynn laughed. "Mommy's little boy. You'll join Daddy's little princess soon..."

"By the way," I said, "I assume Maxx was hiding here all along."

"The more you try to distract me, Inspector, the quicker his death will come."

Alex glanced at me. My pistol was still drawn and hidden, held tight in my sweaty palm. But if I raised it, Maxx would lose his life. And no matter what he'd done to Gem, protecting him was my duty.

Voices rose outside. Lynn stiffened.

"What do you mean, I can't go in?" Ryker James bellowed. "I just want to drop something off. I'm not doing it another bloody day -- I'm fed up of it kicking around the place."

"This duplex is on lockdown!" DC Laney said. "If I have to repeat that one more time, I'm sending you to the station in handcuffs."

Lynn's shoulders slumped. "Oh, it's just another member of the audience. He can come in, can't he, Inspector?" A sliver of blood ran down Maxx's neck. "Tell the police officer that Ryker can come in."

Maxx still had his eyes closed. Jason had closed his too, but their parents were looking at me. Pleading.

I raised my voice. "You can let him in, Laney!"

Hopefully, I hadn't just shortened Ryker's lifespan.

He entered the room a minute later, clenching and flexing his metal fist. It was becoming such a familiar gesture that it felt gravely out of place in this room of white faces and running blood.

His hand froze, along with the rest of him, when he saw what he'd walked into.

"Stay exactly where you are," Lynn said. "Don't move, don't shout...or I'll slit his throat."

I was starting to wonder how many times she'd rehearsed that line.

"What are you doing here, Ryker?" I asked.

"Delivering a diary," he said slowly, his gaze going back and forth between Lynn and the rest of us. "It's Zoe's. I found it when I was putting my flat back together after you ransacked it. I thought it belonged here, in her family home."

"I'm surprised you didn't sell it to a journalist."

Elena glared at me.

"I'm not that cruel." Ryker ran his gaze over the scene again. "Although, now that you mention it, I'd much rather be standing in a news office."

"I'm glad you're here," Lynn said. "My audience of three was quite small. Six is much better."

Six was not much better when it got us no closer to disarming her. I ran my thumb across the handle of my pistol, desperate to raise it.

"Why are you doing this?" Alex asked her.

"I'm in love with Maxx," she said simply.

Shock sucked the warmth out of my core. Silence fell over us like a poisonous cloud. Alex and Ryker stared. The others looked blank.

I cleared my throat. "Maxx is your half-brother."

"Oh, dear, how naughty I am. There would have been such a scandal -- oh, but we had one of those already." Lynn smiled. "Inspector, my older sister fell in love with Maxx. Are you really surprised that I've done the same thing?"

Nausea turned my stomach. "Zoe wasn't related to him."

"Not by blood. But they were brought up together as family, just like me. Blood doesn't dictate who you look to as your kin. It's socialisation. You are taught who your family is. So when I watched my half-brother marry my half-sister and all of that came undone, I wondered why it was so wrong.

"Maxx is all I've ever looked for in a man: older and mature, confident, friendly. Jason's a twat. Mom's disappointed in me. Dad always doted on Zoe. But Maxx is different. I couldn't let him ride off into the sunset with anyone else. I won't."

"Harley was your tipping point," Alex said. "Maxx was starting to create a big, happy family."

"Yes."

"And your obsession with romance," I added, "well, that clue was everywhere. Why are you so desperate for a happy-ever-after, Lynn?"

She sighed wistfully, turning her gaze away. "I've always loved romance novels, even when I was young. They were my escape. I don't have many friends, and I'm not clever enough for my family. I'm not good enough for anyone. But in the stories, even if the heroine isn't clever and even if she has no friends, there's always one person who loves her more than the world: the hero. After she meets him, she's never alone.

"The more I fell in love with those stories, the more I wanted them in my life. But everywhere I looked, love was lacking. Mom and Dad married for the business. Maxx and Zoe argued all the time. Bryony and Jason obviously weren't interested in each other. The more impossible love seemed to become, the more I felt its loss. I wanted it so badly. But Maxx...oh, Maxx." She looked down at him, almost sadly. "He says he doesn't love me back."

Maxx was trembling all over now, and he looked a little green. He'd transformed into a very different man to the one who'd inflicted the same fear on Gem this morning. Very different to the man who'd taken her neck between his hands...

But did he deserve it? That was never my job to decide.

"Don't kill him," I said. "If you kill him, you'll kill your fantasy. How can you imagine your hero if he's dead?"

"You're underestimating the power of imagination," Lynn replied. But she sucked her cheek in and bit it.

"All you'll remember is his mutilated body. Don't do it, Lynn. Let the hero live. You love him."

The knife shook in her hands. She looked down at Maxx, her eyes distant. Watching her fairy tale.

She lowered the blade.

Alex threw himself across the room, tackling her. They crashed into the floorboards. I raised my pistol, but I couldn't get a clear shot. They were struggling, the knife flashing in the light.

The blade slashed across Alex's arm, and he grunted, raising a hand automatically to staunch the blood flow. It was easy for Lynn to scramble from his grip. She got to her feet and turned around, swinging at me.

I ducked, barrelling into her stomach. We flew backwards and crashed on the sofa. My gun slipped out of my fingers, and she swung the knife at my head.

An elbow hit me in the chest. I tumbled onto the floor, and the knife screeched horribly against steel.

Ryker had used his cybernetic arm to take the blow.

Lynn punched him in the jaw, knocking him back. I stood up, my gun trained on her. "Drop the knife."

She froze mid-action, the weapon pointed at Ryker's chest.

Alex grabbed her arms from behind. "Drop the knife!"

The blade tumbled out of her fingers. He clicked handcuffs around her wrists.

I lowered my weapon. "Lynn Castle-Ackerman, I am arresting you for the murders of Zoe Ackerman and Bryony Gold. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."