“I was alone. That was enough.”

“You think that’s it?”

“What else could it be?”

Diane stares at me for a moment, then shakes her head and looks away. “I don’t know.”

I take her hand. “If you start looking for answers and asking, ‘Why me?’ you’ll go crazy. They came after me because they saw me as an easy target, that’s all.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she says. “You had money, and they didn’t take it.”

“I wish they had,” I say. “I hate to lose that ring.”

“It was just a ring. We’ll get another.”

“We can’t do that. It’s bad luck.”

Diane laughs, soft and delicate. “The first one wasn’t exactly lucky, was it?”

“No,” I say. “I guess it wasn’t.”

When we get out to the waiting room, I see Doug sitting in a chair by the window. His head is back and his mouth is open and he’s snoring. The sound echoes.

“Has he been here all this time?” I ask.

“I guess so,” Diane says. “He must’ve stuck around after he called me.”

I don’t remember how long I was in the parking lot. My only memory is of someone pulling me up by one arm, then sitting in Doug’s backseat with him telling me to keep my hand over my head.

“You want to wake him up?” Diane asks.

I tell her to go ahead, and she does.

Doug opens his eyes and looks from Diane to me. When he sees my hand, he winces. “Shit, Jake, what’d they say?”

“Apparently, someone cut off my finger.”

Diane looks at me, frowns.

Doug shakes his head. “Who knows, maybe it’ll improve your typing.”

“Always the optimist,” I say.

Doug stands and grabs his coat and slides it over his shoulders. “What did the cops tell you?”

“That they’re working hard, following every lead.”