Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Shae
Harper brings the letter folded into thirds, like it might bite if she opens it too fast. We’re at my small kitchen table. Blake is out doing pickups for Evelyn. Cameras off. This is supposed to be a safe hour.
Harper doesn’t smile when she sits.
“I got something,” she says, and slides the paper across the table.
I don’t touch it right away. I don’t need to read it to know. The air shifts—the way it always does before something ugly steps into the room.
“What kind of something?” I ask.
“Anonymous.” She watches my face, bracing for a tell. “It was mailed. Not emailed.”
Of course it was.
Iris? Kelly? Dean? Dean always liked things that felt official—tangible—like he still mattered.
I unfold the letter slowly, as if I’m humoring her. As if this is new. My eyes skim lines that land too clean to be random.
She comes from evil.
Manipulation runs in the family.
Her father.
A woman who knows the truth.
Talk to her.
The handwriting is neat. Deliberate. Authoritative.
My jaw tightens. I exhale.
“Oh my god,” I say, and push it back toward her. “This again.”
Harper’s brows knit. “Again?”
“There are always letters,” I say lightly. “People want to feel important. They want to be the one who cracks the case.”
“They mention your father,” Harper says.
“So?” I snap—sharper than I mean to—then smooth it over. “That’s public information. Anyone can Google him. Anyone can make up a story.”
“They mention a woman,” she says. “It says she knows the truth.”
My stomach clenches.
Who else did they send this to? Netflix? Evelyn? Some bottom-feeder blog desperate for relevance? I picture envelopes landing on desks, opening hands, raised brows.
Regret spikes through me—Declan.
I should’ve handled him sooner.
He was a threat to my livelihood—to my freedom. He had recordings and rage when he realized we weren’t going to have the 2.5 kids and white picket fence he told himself we’d have to justify his bad decisions.
An image of his fist clutching the hammer at the top of the bell tower flickers to mind. He was a threat I had to neutralize.
It occurs to me that Harper is backing me into a corner and positioning herself as one more threat I’ll have to neutralize.
I look at Harper and soften my face. Not too much. Just enough.
“This is a crazy person,” I say. “That’s it. Someone who wants attention.”
Harper doesn’t nod. That’s the problem.
“I don’t know,” she says carefully. “It feels… specific.”
“Specific doesn’t mean true.”
She studies me. “I’m not accusing you.”
“But you’re considering it,” I say.
She exhales. “I’m considering how this plays. If we’re upfront—if we get ahead of it—it might actually help. People love transparency. It could lend sympathy.”
The word that makes my blood go hot.
“Absolutely not.”
Harper blinks. “Shae—”
“No,” I say, louder. “That’s how you feed lunatics. You give them oxygen and suddenly they’re experts. Then more crawl out of the woodwork. Then everyone wants their fifteen minutes.”
“I’m just saying—”
“You’re just saying because you don’t have to live with it,” I cut in. “You don’t have to wake up wondering who decided they know your story better than you do.”
Her mouth tightens. “That’s not fair.”
“Neither is this,” I say, tapping the letter. “And you want to platform it.”
Silence stretches between us—heavy, uncomfortable.
Harper looks down at her hands. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter. “This letter scared me.”
That gives me pause. “Why?”
“Because it didn’t sound like a troll,” she says. “It sounded… convinced.”
I laugh—short, sharp. “That’s what conviction looks like when it’s wrong,” I say. “History is full of it.”
She doesn’t laugh with me.
“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask,” she says. “About your father. About this woman.”
My chest tightens.
I don’t know the truth, I think. And I don’t want to. I have enough ghosts. Enough versions of myself to manage.
“I’ve told you everything that matters,” I say. “You know my story.”
“Stories change,” Harper says gently.
There it is—the crack.
For the first time since I met her, I feel her loyalty shift. Not gone. Not yet. Just no longer solid—ice thinning under a careful step. A tremor of terror runs through me.
Because this woman—earnest, well-meaning, dangerous—is the reason I’m sitting here instead of a cell.
And she might be the reason it all slips through my fingers like sand.
I lean forward, hold her gaze.
“If you chase this,” I say quietly, “you will hurt people. Me. Yourself. And for what? A letter from a nobody.”
Her eyes flicker—doubt, conflict.
“I just don’t want to be blindsided,” she says.
“I won’t blindside you,” I promise, and I mean it in the way that matters to me. “But this? This is noise.”
She nods slowly, but it isn’t agreement. It’s postponement.
“I need time,” she says.
My stomach drops.
Time is the one thing I don’t have.
She stands, folds the letter again, slides it into her bag like unfinished business.
“We’ll talk again,” she says.
“Of course,” I reply, smiling when she looks back.
The door closes behind her with a soft, final click.
I don’t move for a long time.
Then I reach for my phone.
Who else did you send it to? I think.
And how many fires can burn at once before even I can’t control the heat?