Chapter Twenty
Twenty
“Goddamn it,” I mutter, because the most horrific thing about this day is what I’ve just come to realize: With my brother out of commission, Bertram Casimir is the only one with the resources to help me now.
I run until I no longer hear the sirens, and I ask Bertram to meet me there.
He arrives in record time—without his driver, and in a beat-up old Honda Civic. “Borrowed from a friend,” he tells me as I climb into the passenger’s side and tug the hood of my coat up over my face.
“I thought you didn’t have friends,” I say.
He quirks a brow. “Careful,” he says. “It sounds like you’re not in a position to be picky. What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”
“Where were you last night?” I ask, catching him off guard. We’re still parked on the side of the road, the occasional car zipping around us.
“What?” he says.
“I can’t explain now, but if you can prove where you were last night, I can help you.”
“Help me?”
“With Annie,” I say. “With her disappearance, and with what happened to Skylar.” I don’t tell him about Erin, who is very likely dead herself.
But by whose hand? If it was Bertram, I’ll know soon enough.
And if it wasn’t…I have to contend with reality about the man I married.
If my instincts about Bertram’s innocence are correct, then I’ve been sleeping next to a stranger for the past eleven years.
And if I’m wrong, and Waylen is innocent, that means Bertram was able to fool me so effectively that I’ve been questioning my own reality for weeks.
I don’t know which is worse. But I’ll know soon enough.
My phone buzzes, distracting me from the fact that he hasn’t answered my question. A text from Elodie:
You’re a murder suspect. They think you killed Erin. Don’t try to explain here. I’m deleting all our messages. Don’t reply.
I reply anyway: Keep Collette away from Waylen. Please.
Now Elodie is regretting trying to be my friend. I’m sure of that. This case has gone over both our heads.
My blood runs cold and rushes through my ears so loudly that I don’t hear Bertram asking me where we’re heading. I was seen leaving Erin’s apartment. Who but the guilty party would leave a scene like that without calling for help?
Numbly, I tell him which street to turn down.
I need to get in touch with my brother, but I already know any calls placed to him at the hospital will be easily traceable. For once, he can’t help me.
“Park here,” I tell Bertram, when we reach an abandoned building at the end of my brother’s block.
It’s a small, unassuming neighborhood. Lower income.
If he wanted, my brother could have afforded a suburban McMansion like the one Waylen and I occupy.
Our parents’ deaths left us with a decent inheritance.
But he takes what he needs to fund his elaborate surveillance setup and leaves the rest of the money to me. It’s in a joint account that only he and I know about, under his name so that it can’t be used as leverage if Waylen and I ever have a bitter divorce.
Or if Waylen ever goes to prison for homicide.
“Here?” Bertram asks, looking at the boarded-up building on a plot overrun with weeds. “It looks—um.”
“I need you to wait here,” I say. I get out of the car and sprint down the street, hoping Bertram won’t follow me to see where I’m really going.
No such luck. I hear the click of his Marzeri Buranos against the uneven pavement.
To look at, Bertram passes for normal. If you don’t follow the world of big tech—and most don’t—he looks like a manicured CEO, or the overachieving assistant manager at Staples.
But there are little details, like his thousand-dollar shoes, the color of a lacquered wooden floor at a gastropub, and the severe part in his short, dark hair, or the fact that his cuticles are perfectly tended to.
Even Elodie would envy how well groomed he is.
He grabs my arm and whirls me around. “Margaux,” he says firmly.
His voice is a rugged whisper—he knows better than to let it carry through the empty street.
Someone in these shuttered houses around us may be listening.
“I’m not stupid. There were police sirens when you called me.
Someone is looking for you. What’s happened? ”
I stare back at him, startled by how badly I want to believe in his innocence.
Don’t be foolish, I remind myself. There’s a tactful way to handle everything.
When I know without a shadow of a doubt that my target is guilty, I don’t go storming into their home with guns blazing and a police force behind me.
I handle it quietly, giving them ample security, letting them check their mail after pulling into the driveway, pouring themselves a cup of morning coffee as they enjoy the sunrise on their porch on a Saturday morning.
Slow and effective, and always lurking in the shadows so that they don’t know what hit them. They never know who was spying on them, or where I came from.
I suppose this is also true if my target is innocent. I don’t know, because it’s never happened before. By now, I’ve always proven their guilt. I’ve always had my brother to help me.
“You said you can help me with Annie and Skylar,” he says. “But—how do you know about Skylar? How can you possibly know about Annie, when even I haven’t seen her in months?”
“I know more than you think,” I tell him. “But before I answer your questions, I need you to answer mine. Where were you last night?”
“I was home! I’m always home, because there’s nowhere else for me to go!
” he cries. “You don’t realize how much Annie controls my life.
I can’t have friends, I can’t speak with my family; everyone I come into contact with is in danger.
No matter how I try to explain this to you, there’s no way you can realize what she’s put me through!
You wouldn’t believe me—nobody would ever believe me.
” He loses it for just a second, his impatience bobbing to the surface, like the bodies of his former lovers from their watery graves.
He’s still gripping my arm, but then he realizes it and eases up a bit.
I stare at him, matching the intensity of his gaze. His glittering eyes, clenched jaw, and a worry vein that strikes his temple like a bolt of lightning.
Is this elusive Annie as powerful as he says, or is she another dead girl in his string of ill-fated lovers? How can one woman have a billionaire with all the resources, security, and power in the world running so scared? Or is he just that good a liar?
What’s the truth?
I look over my shoulder. I can see my brother’s house from here.
The grass has been mowed recently. The only expense he doesn’t spare is what he needs to keep the place looking boring, tidy, and unremarkable.
Nobody would know that there are shelves blocking the windows and doors.
Or any of the things that the cheerful, tacky yellow curtains hide.
There was a time when bringing an outsider here was unthinkable. But he’s dying, and all the rules are broken. This is the last big case of my vigilante career, he said. Crack the code, and I’ll be absolved of all my guilt. I’ll be able to live a normal life.
A “normal life” scares me more than anything, but in this moment, I hope he’s right.
I look to Bertram again. He’s patiently waiting for my reply, even though nervous energy is brimming off him.
“There really isn’t a violent bone in your body, is there?” I say.
“What? Of course not.”
I hesitate. “What if I say that I believe you—about Annie, and about everything?” I ask him. “But the proof I need to not feel like an idiot for trusting you is in one of these houses, and I have to go and get it.”
“You—believe me?” His face lights up with a desperate hope that makes me so sad, because I can see immediately that I’m the only one who’s spoken these words to him in a long time.
“Those police sirens were for me,” I say. “I’m being framed for murder. Or maybe I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, I know I’m innocent, and I need to prove that you’re innocent, so I can trust you.”
“Murder?” he rasps. And then he releases my arm and takes a step back, rakes his fingers through his hair. “Oh God,” he says. “She’s killed someone.”
“Her, or my husband.” Saying the words out loud feels surreal.
Bertram doesn’t press for details. Maybe he realizes he’s in no position to scrutinize my situation, given the nuances of his own.
I make a decision—one I think Mr. X would approve of, but only because he’s not long for this world. I take Bertram’s hand and lead him to my brother’s house.
Bertram is tall, muscular, but lanky at the same time. It’s comical to see him climb in through the back entrance of my brother’s house and navigate the labyrinth of boxes and wires as we make our way upstairs.
“What was that?” he whispers, in response to a faint skittering sound.
“Probably a mouse,” I say.
He shudders.
I’ve come to admire how stalwart Bertram Casimir is, how stunningly adaptable. He doesn’t complain or grouse, and he doesn’t ask the glaring questions, like, “What the hell is this place?” and “What are we doing here?”
I realize now that this is why my instinct feels so correct.
Someone like Bertram is well groomed and media trained.
He can handle himself with aplomb in any interview, from Good Morning America to the most niche of tech podcasts.
But the real test is how he carries himself when there are no interviewers, no public to dazzle.
Just a woman who says she believes him, and a whole lot of wires.
He sits on the only chair at the kitchen table that isn’t covered with boxes of hard drives and old phones—everything from Nokias to iPhones to Androids. He doesn’t ask any more questions.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say, and he nods.