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“When did you find out about Murdoch?” Mac asked gently.
“That he was Jack Chase?” Theo asked. “Alexander Wilson—the lawyer—told me after he secured my release the night Gus was shot.” She looked at Mac. That night seemed like yesterday now. She felt like she’d kissed him yesterday. “He left out that they’d killed Dan, of course, but the rest of it—how they’d given him back his career and his life.” She looked down at his hand as it held hers. “They said they could do that for me, and when I said I didn’t care about writing anymore, they told me it was the only way to save Gus.” She shook her head. “I knew, Mac. Every part of me wanted to run, to get as far from Day Delos as possible, but there was Gus, lying in hospital with a guard on the door. And it was all because of me. It seemed the only way to save him was to confess, and have that confession unshakable. That night, that horrible, awful night, it seemed to make sense; it seemed to be the only thing I could do.”
“For what it’s worth, you did save Gus,” Mac said. “They stopped pursuing him the moment your confession came in.
She asked him questions then. What had happened in her absence, to him, to Gus?
He replied honestly and gently, tempering what had transpired with reassurances that they had all survived it. As much as Theo had suspected that Gus had suffered in the wake of those events, she was winded by how utterly his life had been destroyed. At times she wept for him and for Mac, who had spent five and half months in prison, simply because he’d been their friend, and at other times she was overcome with a sense of relief and profound joy that she was here holding Mac’s hand. Tentatively, Mac told her about Jacob Curtis—his allegations against Gus, and the charges the exposure unearthed.
Theo pulled back her hand as she realized then that he knew, horrified, and though intellectually she fought against the feelings, mortified and humiliated. She’d buried this memory, refused to think about it, mourned its consequences almost as a separate tragedy. The memory still existed, of course, a distorted thing—moments amplified, others lost—but she had put it away. And now here was Mac…Mac whom she’d thought of so often, who’d been one of the memories she hung on to for sanity and hope, telling her he knew and suddenly she was in dread that Jacob Curtis would take more than he already had.
Mac took her hand again. “He’s in prison, Theo. If you don’t want to talk about this, I swear I’ll never mention it again. But if you do, please don’t be afraid.”
Another knock on the doorframe and Gus came in. He groaned. “Are you two making gooey-eyes at each other already? That’s my kid sister, Etheridge!”
Theo blushed. “Shut up, Gus!”
Mac laughed, and Gus shook his hand. “How are you, mate?”
“Fine. They’re only keeping me here because my brothers have made them worry about a genetic predisposition to lunacy.”
Gus exhaled. “Gotta tell you, Mac, trying to explain what happened made me feel like I might be flaming crazy.” He shook his head. “I’m still not sure Maguire believes us… Who the hell sets up a literary agency like that?”
“I think Day Delos started out as an ordinary agency,” Theo said quietly. “Years ago, one or two of their writers were involved in a scandal that should have destroyed their careers. Day Delos and Associates helped them, managed to give them a way to write again. No one ever found out who they really were…and then, as staying clear of controversy became more and more difficult, the agency saw a gap in the market. Eventually, they started dealing exclusively with writers who needed to hide their pasts, or at least believed they did.”
Gus looked at her. “How do you—”
“I was one of their most protected writers for three years, Gus. I heard things occasionally, and I had a lot of time to figure things out.” Theo exhaled. There was more. “In 2021, when QAnon came to the aid of the outgoing president, Veronica Cole realized that fictional narratives could be used to influence people into all sorts of things, to vicariously control democracy. And so she had her writers create strategic conspiracy theories and then sold those to people or entities to whom that influence would be valuable. If you needed people to distrust the education system, or the media, or fast food, a Day Delos writer would develop a conspiracy theory that would do it.”
Inwardly, Mac cursed. Caleb. Even now, Mac wasn’t sure he could get his brother to stop believing. “Do you know who was in charge of Day Delos and Associates, Theo?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Veronica took care of me. She referred to the partners every now and then. I never saw them. As far as I could work out, Day Delos and Associates operated in cells—it’s how they maintained secrecy and loyalty. You never knew who you could trust. And it worked. They knew how to make authors into bestsellers and to keep them…even if they moved to other agencies.”
“Dan Murdoch—” Gus began.
“Used to be Jack Chase—I know. About him and his new manuscript.” She hesitated for just a moment. “He sent it to me…to try to warn me.” Theo took a deep breath. “But Day Delos was watching. The manuscript never reached me, and Veronica found out.”
“She killed Winslow?”
“No. She sent a man called Nenad Dojic… I knew him as Jock. He seemed to hold up the bar at Benders.”
“So you were supposed to spend your life in hiding, pretending to be a Chilean man?” Gus asked hotly.
“Eventually, I would have been given a new name that I could live and write under. But not while there were still people looking for me,” Theo replied.
Gus’s eyes darkened. “I can’t believe you agreed.”
“I didn’t have any choice, Gus. I’d confessed to murder.”
“I can’t believe you did that either.”
“Gus—” Mac began uneasily. But the argument was unstoppable now.
Theo tried to defend herself. “I thought—”
“That I’d done it—I know.”
For a moment Theo was struck silent by the accusation and the edge of real hurt behind it. When she spoke, her voice was hard, angry. “I never for a second thought that, you stupid bloody idiot!” She took a breath to calm herself. “But the police shot you trying to arrest you. They were going to charge you if you survived!” She was shouting at him now. “And it wasn’t going to stop, not as long as I was here… I was trying to protect you, to buy a little time. You blew it all up by trying to sue everybody!”
