Page 395 of A Matter of Time

“You can’t remember them all, Sam, and my guess is that it’s not as bad as it sounds. When I pulled up the report, Greg Fain was twenty-two at the time of his arrest, and the guys he sold the pot to were his friends, ages seventeen to nineteen. I’m guessin’ maybe you and Dom scared the crap out of him then, and when he found out you were involved, the same detective that busted him the only other time he had ever had a run-in with the law…he lost it. No way for Mr. Reid to calm him down, so he did what he felt he had to do and killed him.”

“This doesn’t seem too easy to you?” I asked him.

“Easy?” Agent Calhoun gave me a look. “It only seems easy because it’s so clear. Detective Kage had a hunch, and it was the right one. The box in Greg Fain’s storage locker had photos of him and Mr. Reid from when they went to Texas A&M together. Only Mr. Reid graduated, but they must have kept in touch over the years. Maybe when Mr. Reid came here to see Mr. Harcourt, he looked up his old friend and put the idea into his head about kidnapping you to get your brother to pay the ransom.”

“I remember Caleb being so surprised that Dane was going to pay a ransom for him as well as me.”

“But see, it made no sense that Mr. Reid was kidnapped, and when Detective Kage called me and asked that I stay involved even after both you and Mr. Reid had been recovered…we both felt that it had to be an inside job.”

I nodded. “Who did you think it was?”

He sighed quickly. “I thought it was you, Jory.”

“Me? But I was kidnapped and⁠—”

“But you got away, and the way you did that, that whole story about car thieves and being left…that sounded odd to me.”

“But—”

He put his hand up to still me. “But then Detective Kage was injured, and what you did after that… I knew you were innocent even before you started running around town looking for answers. Finding the two boys that stole the car, finding the house where you were kept, even finding Joyce Fain… It was nice work, and you did it all to keep Detective Kage safe.”

I just looked him in the eye. “Why would Caleb want to hurt Dane?”

“The profile we did for Caleb Reid gives us insight into the mind of a classic psychopath. He wants what he wants, and he has no remorse or even any emotion at all in his quest to fulfill his own needs.”

“What does he want?”

“Well, first, he wants his family to be whole, and with you gone, Jory, the only siblings Dane Harcourt has are the Reids. Second, he wants money, plain and simple. He sees his brother’s wealth, sees the woman he married, the lifestyle he leads, and he wants it for himself. Money as a motivator is powerful, and everybody gets that. With you dead and Mr. Harcourt grieving, Mr. Reid can ingratiate himself and bring his brother back into the fold.”

“Never happen,” Dane told him.

“Of course not,” Agent Calhoun assured him. “But it’s not my fantasy, it’s his.”

I shook my head. “I still⁠—”

“Caleb Reid killed the first victim right after he met you, Jory. After he met you, saw you and Dane interact. Didn’t he even tell you he’d watched you together?”

“I—yeah. He did. He said that he knew Dane liked me a lot and that I could sort of be the bridge between them.”

“Yes. Exactly. But in reality, he was seething. When he killed that kid, he wrote your name on the wall in your old apartment in blood and fecal matter, and under your name he wrote the word ‘fake.’”

I shivered hard and looked over at Sam. He’d never told me that part.

“Come here.” He gestured me close.

I moved to his side, and he tucked my head under his chin, rubbing his hand up and down my arm.

“I think fake means fake brother, and that was the piece that was missing all this time,” Sam explained. “It all makes sense now.”

I nodded slowly.

“The next victim was taken after Mr. Harcourt legally made you his brother,” Agent Calhoun continued. “I’m sure that nearly killed Mr. Reid. Then the⁠—”

“I heard all this when agents Wright and Bingham did the profile on the killer. They told us why he was mad, but now you’re saying all that rage was Caleb’s?”

“Yes.”

“That makes no⁠—”