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Grant was sitting on the couch, not looking at anything.
“Eat,” she said. “We both need our strength.”
He slowly rose, walked over to the table, sat down as if he was an old man. He was drinking again. She took the glass away from him, poured it out, and he didn’t object. She put water in front of him.
“I get it. Your best friend betrayed you. Had our son killed. Your girlfriend. Lied. You’re feeling the brunt of that betrayal. But I need you sober, alert, listening to me. Understood? The Rockfords are in the wind, the FBI has raided Brock Marsh, and they are pursuing a warrant for Franklin Archer. They’ll get it eventually, but it would help if you could make a statement about what you know asfact.”
“That’s the thing—what facts? Do we have any proof? Or is this all...just theory?”
“That’s up to the FBI. All you can do is speak to what you know.”
She dug into her spaghetti. It was after eight and she hadn’t eaten since a breakfast sandwich this morning. She needed the fuel.
Grant drank his water, stared at his food. She motioned for him to eat. He picked up his fork and played with his food.
“Someone broke into your townhouse after I was there Thursday night,” she said. She was the calm one, rational, organized. She had to keep that perspective now. Prepare, plan, execute. She didn’t have the luxury of anger or grief—not tonight.
She swallowed more spaghetti. “They took your laptop. Maybe took files from your drawers, I don’t know—the detective wouldn’t let me look when we returned later.”
He stared at her. “You’re working with the police?”
“I found Madeline’s body, Grant. Which you know because I called and texted you enough times.”
“I turned off my phone, took out the battery. I didn’t know if they were tracking me that way.”
“Someone was tracking me,” said Regan. “They had a tracker on my rental car, another on Tommy’s truck. I don’t know for how long.” She paused. “I saw that you are driving my old Ford Ranger. I thought you’d sold it.”
He shook his head, took a small bite of food. “Too many memories. The good kind.” He shrugged. “I kept meaning to sell it, but never got around to it. I had it in the parking garage and no one cared because the lot was never full. Took it out every now and then to keep it running. We used to take it to Chase’s baseball games. It was our fun car, and I guess I equated it with the best of times—when you, me, Chase were happy. A family.”
That got to her. Dammit, it got to her.
She closed her eyes, willed herself to focus on the here and now. After a few deep breaths, she had herself under control. Turned back to Grant, eyes dry.
“You realize leaving your car in Arlington or Alexandria makes you seem guilty.”
“I don’t care!”
“You need to care.” But the fact that he had driven a different car, not easily traced to him, and that he had his phone off, battery out, gave them a little more time to plan. “It’s too late to drive back tonight. Not on these roads, not when I only had a few hours of sleep. We leave early tomorrow morning—like 3:00 a.m. early. You need a lawyer, and you need to turn yourself in to the police. Let them question you. Tell them the truth. They have no hard evidence—not that I could see—but your visit to Franklin’s house isn’t going to do you any good. What is he going to say to them? He could tell them that you confessed, that you were distraught. Hell, I don’t know. But it could confuse the situation. Still, they’ll need something physical, like the murder weapon.” Which could have been planted in his car or his townhouse, but she didn’t say that. A good frame job would have it found, but not in an obvious spot. “Being here isn’t going to do you any good. I’ll help you, but you need to turn yourself in.”
Grant stared at her. “If I’m in jail, I will be killed. Didn’t you hear what I said? I waslate. If I had been on time I would have been dead with Maddie.”
She believed him.
What Grant knew was dangerous. He might not have physical proof, but he was a well-known civil law lawyer and his testimony could take down BioRise as well as Franklin Archer.
“Do you know who killed Tommy?” she asked.
“Not for a fact.”
“But you suspect.”
He nodded. “BioRise uses a man named Nelson Lee. He doesn’t work directly for Brock Marsh. I think he’s hired on a case by case basis. BioRise has more money than God, so that’s where Bruce Rockford will gravitate.” He finally took a bite of spaghetti.
“So Lee is BioRise, but it’s Brock Marsh who is targeting me.” She thought about the men in her house, the men following her.
“Lee comes in when no one else can get the job done. I know the law firm has hired him before.”
“You know for a fact that Archer Warwick hired an assassin?”
