“Or you did,” Marlow said. “Is that why you went out there? To make the problem go away?”
Farnham opened her eyes. She looked genuinely shocked, but then she’d looked the same way when they’d told her Haley was dead in the first place.
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m not a murderer. How dare you!”
“But you were out there,” Marlow said.
When she didn’t answer immediately, Marlow leaned on the table. Nulls might not make good detectives, but they were good hunters. “There are fifteen speed traps between here and the Reserve. Security cameras at every other shop and fancy house. And I’m pretty sure at least a few of Mr. Deacon’s very wealthy clients have some very expensive game cameras set up in those woods for selfies. It won’t take me long to find the proof you were there.”
Farnham rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t go out there to hurt anyone,” she said. “I didn’t find all of… that …until afterward. When I made Parker show me. That night, I just saw the feed on his computer when I came in to leave him a note. The mess. The girl.”
“Haley.”
Farnham shook her head and looked around for a chair to sit down in. She smoothed her hand over her thighs to press the wrinkles out of her skirt. “I didn’t recognize her,” she said. “I truly didn’t. I hadn’t seen her since the first time she went into rehab, and she was seventeen and strung out. Blamed me for it. Blamed Parker. He loved her. He really did.”
“That’s called stalking,” Cade said, “when they don’t love you back.”
“And she was already gone when I got there,” Farnham said, as if she’d not even heard him. “She’d run off into the woods… like she thought she was still on the show and could fight off wolves barehanded. I was going to take her home. That’s why I drove out. To get whoever it was out of Wallace’s house and pay them off. Get rid of them. If she’d just stayed put, she would have been fine.”
Maybe.
Maybe not. Marlow glanced at the furious mess Haley had made of her prison, the defiance of it. He didn’t think she’d have taken Farnham’s money, and Farnham had proven she would do a lot for her son.
“You followed her into the woods,” he said.
Farnham looked at him for a second. “Of course,” she said. “She was going to get herself killed. I wanted to get her to come back with me, and I could have locked us both in the house until morning. Explained that Parker didn’t mean any harm. I yelled after her, but she wouldn’t stop. I don’t… I don’t know why not. She must have known it was me.”
She sounded genuinely baffled. As if she couldn’t imagine why Haley wouldn’t have trusted her.
“Then she fell,” Cade said.
Farnham nodded. “The trap killed her,” she said. “Not Parker.”
“Except it didn’t,” Marlow said. The back of his throat tasted like old trauma—the sickly-sweet taste of gas cut through with salt—as Farnham avoided his gaze. “She bled out. It would have been quick, but not immediate. She’d have been screaming for a minute or two.”
Nobody said anything for a second. It was quiet enough that the wet click of Farnham’s throat as she swallowed sounded loud.
“She didn’t scream. Not much,” she said, her voice pinched thin as it squeezed through her throat. “We both knew that would bring the wolves. How was I supposed to help her? To get her back to the house? I barely made it myself. Maybe if I’d known who she was, I’d have tried, but I never got that close.”
“And when you got back to the house, you called for help?” Cade said. “To an old friend who’d make the problem go away. Or youthoughtwould make it go away, like they had before.”
Farnham wiped her face with both hands and then smoothed her skirt down again. A small, damp smile curled her mouth for a second, and she leaned forward slightly. “NowthatI don’t think you can prove.”
“Not yet.”
Marlow made a disgusted sound and shoved the creep drawer shut with his knee. He didn’t get angry often. Not that deep, hot anger that felt like it might catch you alight. This had brought him close. Haley had been defiant and brave, and determined. She’d wanted her life, and she’d not deserved what happened to her. Wouldn’t have even if she’d been some random girl like Farnham had thought, who could have gone into a pauper’s grave with no one all that interested in who she was.
“Olivia Farnham, you’re under arrest,” he said. It wasn’t often he got to do this part of his job, but he remembered the highlights. He gestured for her to stand up and turn around so he could read her rights while he cuffed her. “Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?”
She shifted her wrists against the constraint of the plastic ties. “I do.”
Marlow pushed her back down into the chair. She sat obediently, slightly slumped as if all the steel had left her backbone and it couldn’t quite hold up anymore.
“Where’s Parker?” he asked.
She took a resigned breath. “At home,” she said. “His home.”
“No,” Cade said. “Not his. Not yours. It’s been checked. Where is he, Olivia? Come on, you know there’s only one way it ends if he runs.”
