Page 139 of Chameleon Killer

No qualification.

Nothing but two letters.

My grip tightened around the pen. “You didn’t assault him in his office?”

No.

“Did you arrange for someone else to?”

No.

“You didn’t order it?”

No.

“Pay for it?”

No.

That was technically four questions. He didn’t complain. Maybe that was an answer too. I swallowed.

“Did you kill Guy Reardon?”

No.

I stopped breathing. It wasn’t that I believed him. I didn’t. Not yet.

Belief was something you earned through corroboration, not good grammar and clever questions. But the answer fit the thing that had been bothering me.

Everything about Guy had felt—manufactured. His crime scene had been imitative rather than exact. He had survived when no others had, even if that survival had been brief. There were missing medical records. Supplemental toxicology. Fourteen pages gone.

And now the man everyone believed killed him was sitting somewhere—or nowhere—telling me he hadn’t.

“Colin?”

My question.

I clenched my jaw. “Of course.”

Why do you believe me?

“I didn’t say I did.”

You didn't have to.

“That’s convenient.”

No. Your questions changed.

I frowned. How?

Before I answered, you asked about all the ways I could have been involved in the death of Mr. Reardon, including whether I killed him.

After I answered, you asked about Mr. Thorne.

My fingers stopped rotating the pen.

You moved from verification to expansion.