Elliot took a deep breath, smoothing his polo shirt, running a hand through his carefully styled brown hair to restore his mask of effortless charm.
“Send the link, Marcus,” Elliot said confidently. “I’m ready.”
Inside the tactical command van, Agent Reynolds looked at me.
“He’s taking the bait,” Reynolds said. “Maren, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Legally, we already have enough on the wiretap to indict them.”
“Enough to indict is not enough to break them,” I said, my voice steady, my gaze locked on the glowing screens.
I sat down in the high-backed swivel chair directly in front of the mobile command workstation. The technician positioned a high-resolution web camera at eye level, framing my face against a neutral gray partition that mimicked a corporate boardroom.
My reflection stared back at me from the preview monitor.
I looked pale, the dark circles under my eyes carrying the memory of the trauma my body had endured less than twenty-four hours ago. The compression binder was tight around my waist, keeping my freshly stitched surgical incision from tearing. But behind my eyes, there was no weakness. There was only the diamond-hard brilliance of an architect who had watched her enemies walk straight into the kill zone of her own design.
“Video link routed through the Newark server,” the technician announced, his fingers dancing across the mechanical keyboard. “Target device connected. Audio live in three… two… one.”
On the terrace of Villa Paradiso, Elliot set his iPad on the center of the patio table, leaning in alongside Russell and Diane. All three of them leaned toward the front-facing camera, wearing their most convincing expressions of professional gravitas and tragic solemnity.
The screen on their end flickered.
The corporate logo of Apex Horizon Capital dissolved.
And my face appeared in full, crystal-clear high definition directly before them.
For four agonizing seconds, not a single person on the terrace breathed.
The warm California breeze rustled through the grapevine leaves overhead, but the world around the patio table seemed to freeze into absolute stone.
Diane’s crystal wine glass slipped from her fingers.
It struck the edge of the stone table and shattered violently, sending shards of crystal and pale Chardonnay splashing across the pristine linen tablecloth and onto Russell’s trousers. Diane didn’t even look down. Her mouth hung open in a grotesque, slack-jawed O of pure, paralyzed horror. Her hand rose slowly to her throat, her chest heaving as if the air had been suddenly sucked from her lungs.
Russell’s Dominican cigar tumbled from his lips, landing on his bare knee, scorching the fabric of his trousers. He didn’t brush it away. His face, usually flushed with the ruddy arrogance of wealth and privilege, turned the color of damp parchment. His eyes bugged behind his wire-rimmed glasses, staring at the screen as if looking directly into the open gates of hell.
And Elliot.
My husband of six years stumbled backward. His knees hit the wrought-iron frame of his patio chair, nearly sending him sprawling onto the flagstones. He caught himself on the stone balustrade, his hands shaking so violently that his fingers couldn’t find purchase.
“M-Maren?” Elliot’s voice was not that of a confident corporate vice president. It was a strangled, pathetic whimper, stripped of every shred of charm, every shred of cruelty. “Maren… how… what is this?”
I looked directly into the camera lens, holding his gaze through two thousand miles of digital fiber.
“Hello, Elliot,” I said, my voice soft, level, and entirely devoid of emotion. “You look surprised. Did you think dead women couldn’t answer video calls?”
Diane let out a choked, hysterical shriek, clawing at Russell’s arm. “Russell! Russell, what is this?! Turn it off! It’s a recording! She’s dead! She’s in the morgue in Burlington! Elliot, turn it off!”
“It’s not a recording, Diane,” I said, leaning closer to the lens so she could see the slow, deliberate rise and fall of my chest. “I’m breathing. The air is cool. It’s much cooler than the 178 degrees you set my sauna to before you left for the airport.”
Russell finally found his voice, though it sounded like gravel scraping against iron. He lunged toward the iPad, his face mottled with rage and terror.
“Where are you?!” Russell snarled, his spit speckling the camera lens. “Who put you up to this? If this is an extortion attempt, Bellamy, you will rot in prison! I have friends on the federal bench! I have—”
“You have nothing, Russell,” Arthur Sterling’s deep, authoritative baritone cut across the audio link like a judicial gavel.
Arthur leaned into the frame beside me, adjusting his silver cufflinks, looking down at his former colleague with undisguised contempt.
“Arthur?” Russell gasped, his voice cracking. “Sterling? What the hell are you doing with her?”
