“You expect me to believe that? I have evidence. I have concrete evidence that leaves no doubt. You expect me to believe some story you make up now?”

“I don’t care what you believe.” It was a lie. He did care. But he didn’t want to, and saying it was the first step to making it true. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me, so I don’t owe you the truth in this or in anything else. But I didn’t kill him. You were wrong from the very beginning.”

For the first time something cracked on her face, like something in his words or tone or expression had gotten through the intensity of her anger. “I’m not wrong,” she rasped. She rubbed her face like she was trying to wake herself up. “I saw proof. I saw the letter Sean Moore wrote Tom Earnest, naming you.”

He knew what letter she was talking about. It was the one piece of evidence that he’d not been able to get his hands on. Earnest had kept it as insurance, as a weapon to be used in case Caleb ever decided to do something with the evidence he had against him.

He’d thought once Earnest had died, the letter would be lost. Out of context it would mean almost nothing.

But he’d been wrong about that too. He’d been wrong about everything that mattered.

A strange sort of calm was suddenly taking him over, like the torrent of emotion was slowly freezing into chilly stillness. He was conscious of blinking twice. Then saying, “The letter is only one part of the story. You don’t know the rest of it.”

“Then tell me.” She wrapped her arms around her belly and hugged herself. She looked small and desperate and sadder than anything he’d ever seen. “Tell me the rest of it. Please.”

“You’ll have to come with me.”

He didn’t know why he was even suggesting it. He didn’t want anything to do with her. Ever again. Not after all the ways she’d betrayed him. But he suddenly felt trapped in a tragedy whose plot and all of whose spoken lines had been written out more than a decade ago.

And there was nothing left except to play them out on this stage, get through to the end of the story, when dead bodies would finally be stretched out on the floor, signaling the final gasp and applause.

“Okay.” Kelly seemed to be trapped in it too, her intensity of before coiling into something tight and shaky. “Where?”

“My house.”

“I’ll drive myself there.”

Caleb was relieved, since he didn’t want to face a long car ride with Kelly and he needed time to pull himself together again. Without another word, Kelly picked up her keys and purse and followed him out of her apartment and down to the lobby.

There they parted, and Caleb tried to use the quiet drive to figure out what he should say, what he should do, what he should feel.

But it was no use. He drove on autopilot, and he couldn’t remember anything about the road or the traffic when he pulled through the gate to his house. He’d been in a numb stupor the whole time, and he didn’t have any clearer sense of what to do than he’d had when he’d left.

Kelly arrived about five minutes after him. He was waiting at the front door for her.

She looked pale and controlled and still a little shaky as she followed him into his home office, where he pulled the latch that released the bookcase to reveal his hidden safe.

He unlocked it, swung open the door, and reached in to pull out two audiotapes. Back then they’d been high-end equipment, small enough to fit into covert audio recorders.

He handed them to her.

“What are these?” she demanded.

“Proof. The proof you’ve been looking for.”

“Proof of what?”

“Of who really arranged for your father’s death.”

“Do you have something to play them on?”

“Of course.” He still felt like he was in that strange calm as he went to his desk and pulled out an old-fashioned recorder made for playing the tapes. He reached his hand out, and she passed them back to him. He slid the first one into the recorder.

His office was eerily silent when he clicked the compartment closed and then hit play.

Voices from the past crackled as they filled the silence.

“What the hell happened?” The first voice was his, and it was stretched with anger, fear, and confusion. He remembered very well how he’d felt seventeen years ago as he’d gradually seen a suspicious series of events transpire.

“What are you talking about?” That was Thomas Earnest, the former CEO of Vendella.

“I had things under control. I had it taken care of. Now I’ve just heard that he was killed, and Moore says he doesn’t know what happened.”

“Moore doesn’t know. And there’s nothing for you to know either.”

“Did you kill him? Did you have him killed?”

“Do not ask me questions like that out loud.”

“I want to know.”

“I’ve made all the arrangements that need to be made. We no longer have a problem. That’s all you need to know.”

“But I already had it taken care of—without anyone getting hurt. There was absolutely no reason for that.”

“You know what’s at stake. You know what would happen if certain things came to light. All of us would be ruined. The company wouldn’t survive it. I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t either. I did what had to be done, and I don’t want to hear from you about this again.”

“But—”

“That is all.”

The tape clicked off, and the office fell into silence again.

Caleb stared at the recorder. For some reason, he didn’t want to see Kelly’s face as she listened to the conversation about her father.

He slid in the other tape.

The first voice, again, was his. “Did you know what was going to happen?”

“Of course not.” That was Sean Moore’s voice. He assumed Kelly would recognize it too. “What do you take me for?”

“Well, someone knew. Someone arranged it.”

“We both know who that someone was.”

“So what are we supposed to do now?” Caleb didn’t like the crack in his voice. He didn’t like how young he sounded on the tape.

He didn’t like that he felt even more helpless and betrayed now.

“Nothing. We do absolutely nothing.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing to do. What? Are you thinking about speaking out for truth and justice? What kind of an idiot are you? You’d be even deader than he is by the end of it. This is hardball. If you want to be in the game, you have to play by the rules. These are the rules. So keep your mouth shut and do what you’re supposed to do. There will be plenty of rewards for all of us at the end of it.”

That was the end of the second tape. Then there was nothing but deep silence in the room.

Caleb still couldn’t look at Kelly’s face.

“It was Earnest,” he said. “He made the call. He arranged it. He had your father killed. Moore and I found out after it happened. We went along with it—I’m not saying we were guiltless—but we aren’t responsible.”

“I saw the memo Moore wrote to Earnest. It said the plan was yours.”

“He was talking about my original plan, which didn’t include anyone dying. Earnest just kept it because it made me look guilty. He knew I had these tapes. He was using it as leverage, so I’d never do anything with these.” He shook his head and looked down at the tapes. “I never did.”

Caleb finally turned his eyes to Kelly’s pale face. “I didn’t kill your father.”

She made a kind of choking sound and stumbled backward.

Ridiculously, his instinct was still to reach out and help her.

But she jerked away from his outstretched hand and staggered back several more steps.

Then she whirled around, as if something had possessed her, and ran out of the office.

He followed her instinctively, without thinking it through. Their conversation wasn’t over yet. Their business wasn’t finished.

She’d still utterly betrayed him, and she wasn’t going to get away from him so easily.

She was fast—faster than he would have expected—and she was moving at a dead run, like she was being chased by demons. She knew her way through his house and grounds. He had to sprint to keep up with her, and even so he didn’t catch her until she’d gotten outside and was halfway across the lawn.