جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

KANE’S POVI hadn't expected to find my office looking like a crime scene, the door clicked shut behind me, and I stopped. Papers covered almost every inch of the floor. Sticky notes clung to reports, notebooks lay open in different directions, and my coffee table had completely disappeared beneath neat little piles labelled in handwriting I immediately recognised.One pile simply read: HELP.I looked at the woman responsible and I was surprised she was still here because I'd been certain she would've disappeared the second the meeting ended. Most people would've, but apparently, I'd underestimated her.Looking at her now, I wasn't entirely convinced she realized how ridiculous she looked.Her shoes had been abandoned somewhere behind her, Her once neatly styled hair had been twisted into a messy bun held together by a pen, while another rested behind her ear as though she'd forgotten it was there.A notebook lay open across her lap, pages filled with hurried notes, arrows, circles,

KANE’S POVDaniel was already sitting in my office when I walked in, one leg crossed over the other, a manila envelope resting on his knee like a loaded gun.“You’re late,” he said.“I was in a meeting with the Ferris Group. They wanted to know if Ross Empire was still a safe bet.” I shut the door and loosened my tie. “I told them it was safer than it had ever been, which is the biggest lie I’ve told this month.”“Then you’ll hate what I’m about to say.” He didn’t smile, and Daniel always smiled. That was how I knew it was bad. “Sit down, Kane.”“Why what's the matter”“Just sit.”I walked to my chair and took a seat. He slid the envelope across my desk.“Start with the top page.”I pulled out a single sheet. It was a copy of a death certificate; the paper was yellow, and the embossed seal was in blue. Liam Alexander Ross. Cause of death: blunt force trauma and drowning. At the bottom was a signature in thick black ink.“Dr. Harold Pembrook,” Daniel said. “The county coroner. He signe

PAIGE’S POVThe motel room smelled of damp carpet and old cigarettes, and every time a car passed the window, I held my breath until its headlights slid off the curtain.“You have to eat something,” I told myself out loud. The vending machine sandwich sat unopened on the nightstand, next to the cheap burner phone I had bought with the last cash in my wallet. My real phone was in a storm drain six blocks from my apartment, and I hoped the rain had already ruined it.I sat cross-legged on the bed with my laptop open, my hands were shaking so badly that I mistyped my own password twice. The folder was still there, tucked inside a file called Mom Medical Bills, because nobody ever opens that one. Fourteen audio files, and each was named with a date.My mother’s voice came back to me, from the last time I had called her from Ohio. “Are you sure about this job, sweetheart? It sounds too good.” I had laughed and told her not to worry, and then I had cried in a parking lot for twenty minutes

ANYA’S POVRose was humming when I came downstairs the next morning, some old tune I almost recognised, her sleeves pushed up to the elbows and a pan of eggs hissing on the stove. The kitchen smelled of butter and toast, and the sun lay across the island in a warm, ordinary stripe. I stopped on the last step and looked at her back for a moment longer than I meant to.“Good morning, dear,” Rose said without turning around. “You barely touched dinner last night, so I made extra.”“I had a long day.” I took a stool on the island. My phone lay beside my plate, and the photo of my burnt grilled cheese was still open on the screen, with Kane’s reply underneath: I’d eat it. I turned the phone face down. “Rose, can I ask you something?”“Of course.”“I realised this week that I know almost nothing about you. Where did you work before you came here?” I asked, trying to make conversation so I wouldn't just sit her in silence and also to take my mind off what's been happening these past few days

KANE’S POVI reached the back room of my club by noon the next day, David and Daniel were already there, with the door locked and a laptop open between them.Cassie had texted at dawn. She slept. She laughed at breakfast. I had read it four times in the car.Daniel laid out the evidence the way a dealer lays out cards: the pictures of the passport, the cash, the flash drive, the black-box data from the river, the morgue records with no name on them, and a printout of the dead coroner’s empty house in Westchester. David read it all without speaking, which is the most alarming thing he'd ever done. When he finished, he pushed the pages aside and folded his hands.“Tell her,” he said.“Not yet.”“Kane.”“Not yet, David.”“He’s alive. He has a passport, a stash of cash, and a woman who has been sleeping under her roof.” David’s voice stayed level, which only made it worse. “And you want her to keep walking around that house believing he’s at the bottom of a river.”“If I tell her, she’ll