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“But he discovered her,” Evan said.
“And shot her—on purpose—before she could leave with the proof or tell anyone else.”
“Yes,” Evan said. She heard the horror in his voice too. Their emotions were unraveling right along with the truth. “If she got shot outside, maybe he was the one who surprised her and not the other way around. Maybe he took her camera and destroyed that film. Maybe he even went so far as to take a suggestive photo of himself and put that new roll of film in there.”
“But he didn’t know that she had more pictures at home, hidden in one of her books,” she said. “Photos that my father would find years and years later.”
She was barely holding back a scream. Her father had been ruined by the thought of his wife having an affair. Because it hadn’t made sense.
Because it hadn’t been true.
Noelle felt sadness and rage and injustice rise up inside her the same way it must have done for him. It’d festered like an open sore, made worse by the fact that her mother’s death had become a media sensation. Her father had been laughed at, cringed over. And yet he’d loved his wife unendingly, a love that came to feel like a humiliating curse. It’d wrecked him. Noelle had watched it happen in real time. Little had he known then that there was something dark and malignant beneath the story that was a lie.
She felt weak. She took a few steps back, leaning against the edge of the table for support.
She pictured her father the moment he found the itinerary and the photos and understood the terrible truth, or at least part of it. He must have taken them to Dow, and when he broke into the site, they realized that whatever reason she’d been at the Sinclair home, it wasn’t becauseshe was stalking her lover. She’d seen something. She’d snapped photos. It was the reason she was murdered. He’d been stripped of his life and, more cruelly, his trust in the woman who had owned his heart. And left with nothing. He’d trusted in the justice system once before and been screwed, and so this time, instead of turning to the police, he’d taken matters into his own hands, part of his soul so twisted he’d done the unthinkable and set his sights on an innocent in retribution for what had been done to him.
How long had he stewed, allowing the open wound to become a gaping sore that he fell into, melding with the rot? Becoming it. Morphing into the very monster he despised.
Planning his revenge.
Her eyes lifted to Evan as he watched her. His wheels were turning, too, as the picture became clear. He turned away, folding the contract and putting it in his back pocket. The drawer closed with a small click. “We should try to find the files from the case,” Evan said, his voice scratchy. He cleared his throat as he moved to another drawer. “His lawyer might have returned them—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The case presented was all lies. They must have known, but even if they didn’t, they looked the other way.” Uninterested in the truth. Only there for the money. “There’s nothing to be done. Trying your father again would be double jeopardy.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth. It was all too much. Too much. Evan stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her, whispering calming words against her hair.
Us,she reminded herself.We are the cure. We are the answer to the sickness that wants to spread.
He stepped back after a moment, their pained eyes meeting. “My dad,” he said. “He wasn’t surprised by your presence in that motel room that day in Mexico.” He blew out a breath, looking over her shoulder, back in time. “His reactions ... have always felt off.”
She drifted back there for a moment, pictured the bandage around his broken hand, that shower where’d they’d tried so desperately to cleanse their souls, making do with their bodies, the furniture piled in front of the door, the way his father had looked at her with hatred. But Evan was right, no surprise. “Maybe you told him on the phone that I was there with you,” she said. She’d been in the shower when he’d called his dad.
He frowned. “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Also ... he seemed to know about my hand. He told me he’d get a surgeon. How did he know it wasn’t burned or ... just needed a cast.” He massaged his temples. “And he didn’t call the police. He came there himself. He explained it later by saying he didn’t trust anyone, and I didn’t, either, so I accepted that.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. But maybe ... he didn’t call the police because he knew the rules. He knew once we got out of there, we were free. Bets were paid, and the cleanup crew went to work. We’d won, and no one would come after us.”
She felt full body shivers, but she steeled her spine and tried her best to clear her mind, to think. She wished she could help, buteverythingseemed off that day. “It all feels ... distorted. I don’t trust my own memories. But, yes, your father did seem to know more than he should have.”
“Because he’d watched us.”
She looked away. There seemed to be some evidence to suggest he’d watched whatever game they’d been a part of at some point, but to watchthem? And notdo something? Even for a monster, it didn’t make sense. Her mind snagged on something. “The rope,” she murmured.
“The rope?”
“Yes, the one I was sent. It didn’t fit at the time. What was it for?”
“Are you thinking my dad sent it? For what reason?”
“Maybe he was giving me the opportunity to hang myself. Maybe he thought if I did, you’d be free.” A twisted kindness? Or merely a plea to end the game for his son?Hang yourself. End this.
Evan looked like he was going to be ill. He turned and jerkily started opening more drawers, pulling out file folders and loose papers, giving them a brief glance and tossing them on the floor. “Evan—” She stepped forward and put her hand on his arm, but he shrugged her off.
“There must be something here,” he said. His voice sounded the way it had when they’d been in those cages. Parched. Broken. There was too much horror being tossed at them to begin to comprehend. His dad had watched them. Watched his own son suffer. Be brutalized. Wither away. Be humiliated.
She understood that he needed to throw things, and if he wanted to throw his father’s files—hell, if he wanted to pick up the cabinets themselves and toss them at the walls—she had no reason in the world to stop him. Hell, she’d even join him. She pulled a drawer all the way out and let it crash to the floor, spilling its contents.
