“Some of them were about other things. He was protecting his back on several fronts, it looks like. But there was something that’s important to us.”

Kelly stared at Jack, who was looking at her with a strange kind of intensity. “What?” she asked.

Jack pulled a few pieces of paper out of his file and handed them to Kelly.

She stared at it blankly, not able to process what she was looking at.

It was a memo. She’d seen hundreds of them over the years. Several of them had been added up as evidence in her mother’s search for the truth and now hers.

Just a memo. Something people wrote all the time. This one was very short, and it was signed by Sean Moore with what looked like an expensive pen.

It was only two sentences long.

This is a potential problem, but Marshall is taking care of it. He has a plan.

She flipped over the next page to see a report from her father, outlining certain research findings that would have halted the development of a medication that had cost the company billions to develop.

She turned back to the original memo. It was written by Sean Moore, but it was clear that the plan had been Caleb’s.

Both of them had been in on it. All three of them had been in on it.

And Caleb was just as guilty as the other two. It was his idea, so he was even guiltier.

She checked the date of the memo.

A couple of days later, her father had been shot dead in the woods in a professional hit.

Kelly made a strange choking sound and jerked away from the table. Stumbled a few steps toward the corner of the room and stared at the blank wall in front of her, trying to process everything.

Caleb had murdered her father. As coldly and surely as if he’d pulled the trigger. Despite the fact that he had a soft, tender side to his heart. Despite the way he sometimes seemed so naked and needy with her. Despite the way he was deeply human. Despite the fact that he loved her.

He had killed her father, and she had let him make her believe that he didn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t do something so horrible.

It felt like everything was breaking inside her, shattering so completely it could never be put back together. He had done it after all. And she had fallen for him anyway. And even now, if she were to see him again, maybe a little part of her wouldn’t even care, since she was so undeniably drawn to him, despite everything.

And that made her a weak, despicable person. Just as despicable as Caleb himself.

“Kelly?” Jack asked from behind her. She’d completely forgotten he was in the room. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she replied, her voice not cracking or wavering despite the broken agony of her heart. “I’m fine.”

Jack must have taken a step closer to her. She had her back toward him, but it sounded like he had moved nearer. “It doesn’t look like you’re fine.”

Kelly was still staring at the blank wall. Seeing Caleb’s face. His handsome, haunted, intelligent face.

And she hated it all over again.

She might hate herself for how foolish and spineless she’d been in falling for him, but nothing she’d done equaled his guilt. He’d come up with the plan for killing her father. He might as well have pulled the trigger. He was that ruthlessly ambitious, that heartless at the core, no matter how he was playing at relationships right now.

Kelly should have known it all along. She shouldn’t have let herself be deceived. But she wasn’t going to be weak anymore.

Fuck Caleb and all of his lies. She would do what she’d come here to do from the very beginning, before everything had gotten so infinitely fucked up. She would make sure his sins came to light—everyone would know who he really was—and she would seek whatever kind of justice was still available.

She turned around on her heel, her heartbreak suddenly, unnaturally hardening into a cold kind of anger. “I’m fine,” she said again.

Jack’s face was twisted now with what looked like concern and confusion. “I’m really sorry. I know you were hoping for a different outcome. But this seems to be pretty clear. Earnest was definitely involved, and it looks like he kept this memo to protect himself, in case one of the other two turned on him. Whoever cleaned out his files must not have known the context, so it got stuck in a drawer with the other paperwork. But Marshall was definitely in on the murder. Your father was going to pull the plug on the project, and they’d invested too much to let it go down the drain. So they silenced him.”

And that was it. The answer to everything. The whole mystery of her life, unraveled in a few simple sentences, sketched out in stark black and white.

“Yes,” she said, her voice so hard it was almost unrecognizable. “That’s what happened.”

Jack pushed his hand through his hair again with a kind of restless energy. He wasn’t cool and controlled like Caleb was. And he wasn’t calculating or brilliant or sophisticated or deceptive or ruthless or untouchable.

And suddenly Kelly knew what she was going to do. She wasn’t going to want a man like Caleb in any way. She wasn’t going to let herself have fallen for the man who’d murdered her father. She wasn’t going to let it be true.

She took a step closer to Jack. “So that’s done.”

Jack’s dark eyes narrowed, and he tugged in agitation on his sleeve. “Is it? Kelly, you look strange. What’s going on?”

Kelly took another step, so that she was directly in front of him. So close she could reach out and touch him.

Fuck Caleb. Kelly didn’t—wouldn’t—let herself want him anymore.

Dropping her eyelids slowly, she gazed up at Jack through her eyelashes. “I’m reconsidering a few things.”

Despite the shift in her energy, Jack still clearly didn’t know what to expect. His mouth was slightly open, and his forehead had wrinkled into lines of confusion.

She liked that Jack was confused. Liked that he was off stride. Liked that he wasn’t prepared for every possibility the way Caleb was. And liked that he didn’t always think twenty steps ahead.

She couldn’t let herself be the kind of person who fell in love with Caleb, and there was only one way to prove that to the world—and to herself.

Kelly took one more step, pressing her body up against Jack’s. “In fact, I’m reconsidering everything.”

Then she slid her hands up his chest until they were spanning the back of his neck. She could both feel and hear him suck in a sharp breath. Then she combed the fingers of one hand up and through his hair until she could ease his head down toward hers.

“Including you,” she breathed, using her free hand to pull the clip out of her hair, letting the long waves tumble down her back.

Jack made a guttural sound in his throat, an instinctive heat igniting to life in his eyes. But he was still surprised, his body stiff and unmoving against hers.

So Kelly pulled his head down all the way, capturing his lips in a kiss.

The kiss was slow at first, since Jack was obviously unprepared for it. But Kelly slid her tongue along his lips, faintly tasting a mingling of coffee and toothpaste. One hand came up and held his face, feeling the rough texture of his skin against her palm. Then she dipped her tongue into his mouth, slid it along the inside of his lips.

At this point Jack moaned into her mouth, and then his arms were suddenly around her, holding her tightly against him.

By the time her tongue slid all the way into his mouth, his tongue was ready to meet it, teasing and tangling with hers.

Jack’s kiss wasn’t anything like Caleb’s—less subtle, less nuanced, more direct and traditional. But it was effective and enthusiastic, and Kelly had no trouble getting into it.

Their mouths were wide open now, and Kelly’s eyes were shut. She could hear herself making little noises as her lips and tongue moved urgently against Jack’s.