Chap­ter 83 begins with Amy hid­ing in the boot of Gary Gough’s Land Rover, as he dri­ves her towards Lon­don. Gary is on his way to a lunch meet­ing with an amphet­a­mine deal­er from Liv­er­pool, which pro­vides a con­ve­nient excuse for the detour. Amy remains hid­den, aware that the police are active­ly search­ing for her in Axley and near­by areas. The pre­vi­ous night, an offi­cer had knocked on Gary’s door, and he man­aged to redi­rect the inquiry by using the name of his house, “No Com­ment,” an intri­cate­ly carved log that Amy had nev­er noticed before. This tac­tic helps him avoid draw­ing atten­tion and gives Amy the breath­ing room she needs to remain out of sight. As they dri­ve along the M3, Amy stays hid­den, feel­ing a mix of dis­com­fort and sur­pris­ing calm­ness in the con­fines of the boot.

Although she could tech­ni­cal­ly get out of the boot at any point, Amy finds it sur­pris­ing­ly com­fort­able. Gary, ever the con­sid­er­ate dri­ver, sends her a text from the front seat, check­ing on her well-being. She responds with a thumbs-up and a “Zzz,” sig­nal­ing that she’s fine and pre­fer­ring to remain undis­turbed. Despite her uncon­ven­tion­al posi­tion, Amy feels a sense of guilt for send­ing Steve and Rosie to Dubai with­out her. She knows it’s nec­es­sary to stay out of sight, though, espe­cial­ly since any new evi­dence relat­ed to the crimes could put her at risk. The more she thinks about it, the more her fear grows about being impli­cat­ed in the crimes. Her only hope now lies in find­ing out the iden­ti­ty of François Lou­bet and bring­ing an end to his involve­ment in every­thing that has gone wrong.

Amy’s thoughts also turn to Steve and Rosie, who are in Dubai togeth­er. She feels uneasy about their time apart from her, unsure how they will man­age with­out her calm­ing pres­ence. Gary plans to drop Amy off at the under­ground park­ing of Max­i­mum Impact, where she’ll stay for the night. Tomor­row, she and Jeff will go over the François Lou­bet files togeth­er, though Amy feels appre­hen­sive. Nei­ther she nor Jeff is par­tic­u­lar­ly skilled at deal­ing with such com­plex files, and the task ahead looms heavy on her mind. As the dri­ve con­tin­ues, Amy’s con­cern grows about what might hap­pen next, espe­cial­ly as she tries to stay ahead of any poten­tial dan­gers.

While still hid­den in the boot, Amy dis­cov­ers a met­al case con­tain­ing two hand­guns, which gives her a sense of both pow­er and cau­tion. She texts Gary, ask­ing if she can take one for pro­tec­tion, and he quick­ly responds with a thumbs-up and a gun emo­ji, giv­ing her per­mis­sion. With both guns now in her pos­ses­sion, Amy feels a lit­tle more secure, know­ing that she has some form of pro­tec­tion in case the sit­u­a­tion turns dire. Her mind con­tin­ues to race, con­sid­er­ing all the angles and risks of her cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. The imme­di­ate con­cern is not only escap­ing the police but also stay­ing ahead of what­ev­er François Lou­bet might do next.

In addi­tion to her per­son­al con­cerns, Amy is also wor­ried about Steve and his stay with Adam at the vil­la. The two seemed some­what uncom­fort­able when they real­ized it would be just the two of them, and this left Amy won­der­ing about what might hap­pen in their pri­vate time togeth­er. Although Rosie had offered Steve a room at her hotel, Amy had insist­ed that he spend time with Adam, believ­ing it would be ben­e­fi­cial for father and son to recon­nect. Even so, she finds her­self won­der­ing what kind of con­ver­sa­tions will unfold between them, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing Deb­bie, a sub­ject they always seem to avoid when togeth­er. As the Land Rover nears Lon­don, Amy hopes that Steve and Adam have final­ly begun to talk about her, sens­ing that this unre­solved top­ic has been lin­ger­ing between them for far too long.