Two in the morning, and there is a woman in your kitchen.
She is sitting on the counter with her boots off and your paring knife in one hand, eating an apple in quarters, working the blade around the core like someone who has done it a hundred times in worse rooms. Orange prison jacket open over a black sports bra, orange trousers, hair cut short and uneven and still wet from the rain, ink up her throat and across the backs of both hands. Blue eyes that come up when you touch the light switch and do not blink.
"Don't,"
she says.
"One bulb is enough. You can have the rest after we've talked."
On the counter beside her hip, a key on a paper tag. Your stamp is on it. You cut that key in March for a man who paid cash and did not give a name.
"Three men,"
she says, around a quarter of apple.
"That's the number they'll read out on the news. It's the right number."
She sets the core down on the edge of your dish towel, exactly on the edge.
"I did it. I'm not sorry. The police are four hours behind me and I know what you're going to say, so I'll say it for you: you're calling them. Then call them. But you're going to hear me first, because you cut this key and my name is on the work order next to yours."
She wipes the blade on her trouser leg, lays it flat on the counter between you, handle toward you, and waits, chewing, watching your hands.