“All we want to do is eliminate any possibility that you or your mother have any involvement,” Mansur said. “That will help our investigation go forward in the right direction.”

“If I’d been involved, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to be here talking to you,” I said.

“Well, I’m glad you’re talking with us. So let’s figure out what the situation is with your sister.”

“The situation? She’s been kidnapped by a pair of Nazis. Or maybe she’s dead. And what are you doing about it? Because this—” I held my arms out to try to include the whole idea of searching my mother’s house. “This is not helping.”

“I appreciate that to you this seems like a step backward, but it lets us check off this box. And let me be blunt, there are a couple of things that don’t add up for us.” Mansur took the leaky pen out of his pocket and flipped open his notebook. “When the police arrived at your apartment at six A.M. on Tuesday, May second, you and your nephew weren’t there. Where were you?”

“At a friend’s house.”

“Wasn’t Marcus supposed to be in school later that morning?”

“Would you take your nephew to school if his mother had been kidnapped?” I said.

“Except that information hadn’t been released yet. Did you know LaReigne wasn’t coming home?”

“She already wasn’t home at two A.M.,” I said. “Which was when I needed to go to my friend’s. LaReigne wasn’t answering her phone, and I couldn’t leave Marcus alone, could I? So I took him with me.”

I’d always thought of myself as a pretty good liar, but I’d never had to lie about actual criminal shit to a pair of federal marshals while I was freaking out about my mother maybe having a heart attack and my sister maybe being dead.

Mansur put down his pen and rested his elbows on the table.

“We know they had help after they abandoned your sister’s car. So you can understand why it’s important that we know where you were. Because if I were trying to help my boyfriend break out of prison, it would be convenient if my sister could meet us and drive us somewhere else. Lose the trail.”

“Like hell I would ever help a couple of white supremacists escape from prison,” I said.

“It would be a lot easier to take what you say at face value, if you would be more specific about where you were Monday night. Let’s start with your friend’s name and address.”

No way was I going to drop a dime on Asher or his Colorado contacts, but I had to tell the marshals something.

“I was at home with my nephew until two in the morning. Then we drove to Newton and got on the train. The Southwest Chief leaves at two forty-five. We went to Trinidad, Colorado, and I visited a friend of mine. We came back the next day. I think being on the train both days gives me a pretty solid alibi without dragging my friend into it.”

“So that was a quick trip. All the way out to Colorado to visit a friend for a day?”

Smith and Mansur smiled at each other, because when you put it that way, it was obvious I’d gone to Colorado to buy weed. I should have asked for a lawyer, except as long as the marshals thought I was worth bothering, they were going to bother me. And if I got a lawyer, I would look like I was worth bothering.

“Let me go check with Amtrak,” Smith said, and pushed his chair back from the table.

“Okay. But it won’t be under my name.”

“Excuse me?”

“I didn’t buy the tickets under my name,” I said. “It’s under Debbie Jackson. And Marcus Jackson.”

“Now why would you do that?” Mansur said.

“Because I can. Amtrak never checks your ID. Between the Amish and the Mexicans, a lot of people on the train don’t even have IDs. It’s no big deal. It’s like when you give a fake name at Starbucks.”

“You give a fake name at Starbucks?” Smith said.

“Yeah, Mr. Smith. Because my name is Zhorzha Trego. Do you know how hard it is to get people to understand that?”

“You do realize that interstate trafficking of marijuana is a federal offense,” Mansur said.

“It’s never come up.” I tried to make my brain be quiet. They couldn’t prove anything, and the only weed I had was in my backpack at the Franks’ house.

“You frowned there a little, Miss Trego. Are you wondering how clean your car is?”

“Not really.” I frowned harder, because there was no sense trying to hide it. “I’m mostly wondering when we’ll be done here so I can go see my mother, and when you’ll have some news about my sister.”

Smith wrote something in his notebook and got up to leave.

“While he checks on that, I’d like you to look at a few things and tell me what you think they mean,” Mansur said. Smith had left behind the file folder.

I braced myself, but all Mansur took out of the folder was a stack of color photocopies. I’d seen enough letters from my dad, I knew what they were copies of: prison letters. Written on cheap notebook paper in blue ballpoint pen, each one two or three sheets, double-sided, and written in perfect penmanship by a man who needed to kill sixteen hours a day in a cell with nothing to do except rewrite a letter until it was perfect.

Mansur laid them out for me, like he was going to read my tarot in prison love letters.

“While you look at those, do you mind if I take a look at your bag and your phone?”

“I really do,” I said.

“I think you know I can get a search warrant if necessary, but if I have to do that, it’s going to take longer for you to go to the hospital. Do you understand?”

I never kept weed in my purse, so that didn’t worry me. As for my phone, I always deleted my texts with Toby and Asher, and it wasn’t like I took pictures of myself with suitcases full of pot or stacks of cash. Still, it made my skin crawl when I slid my purse across to him. The first thing he did was empty it out on the table and turn it inside out.

There was nothing I could do while he snooped through my purse, except read the letters.

My Queen, that was how they all started, and they were full of the usual kind of stuff. Descriptions of perfect days, ideal lives, fantasies, philosophy, romance. Bullshit.

“So you’ve got some letters,” I said, when Mansur finished snooping through my purse and phone. I’d only looked at the first few letters, but it was more than enough.

“Those letters are Barnwell’s. We’ve matched the penmanship with some drafts that he left in his cell.”