I heard Lucinda coming down the stairs, and she entered the kitchen, her eyes teary and bloodshot, her dress wrinkled. I set down the glass and started to leave, but she stopped me, taking my arm.
“Jason, we have to talk.”
“No we don’t—” I began, then stopped myself, in case the kitchen was bugged. I raised a hand, and Lucinda fell silent. I motioned to the front door. “I need some air, don’t you? I’ll show you the marsh. I have a spot there.”
“Okay,” Lucinda answered, puzzled. She followed me to the door, and we stepped outside. If Special Agent Reilly was monitoring the cameras, he would see we weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. We had just buried our daughter, and it would make sense that we would want time alone. I led the way down the steps and to the path that led through the scrub to the marsh, and finally to the water’s edge.
Lucinda looked around, puzzled. “What are we doing out here? What’s going on?”
“I needed air.” I stepped away, not wanting to stand close to her. “What is it you want?”
“Why are you acting so—”
“What do you want?”
“I know you’re hurt, and I’m so sorry, I was going to tell you about Paul.”
My gut twisted. “I was better off not knowing about Paul. But now that I do, I don’t know how to stay with you. I don’t see how we go forward.”
“But we have to.” Lucinda’s blue eyes pleaded with me. “We love each other, and we’re in the program—”
“That’s not a reason. I have a decision to make.” I didn’t see how we went forward, but I didn’t see how we didn’t go forward, either. All I could think of was the day I told her I was dropping out of law school. “You think Paul Hart’s better than I am, because he’s a lawyer? You’re wrong. You have it upside down.”
Lucinda got flustered. “I don’t think that—”
“Yes you do, and I thought better of you, but I was wrong. You know, honey, this is a strange world we live in, and everybody lies.” I found myself spilling my guts. “The lawyers lie, the cops lie, FBI lies, the government lies. Not me. I didn’t, I don’t. I may not be a lawyer, but I took an oath, as a court reporter. My oath is that everything I write down is accurate, which is another word for truth. The transcript, the exhibits, everything—when I sign my name to it, it’s true. I watch lawyers every day, and I sit in the same room and hear them lie. I know they’re lying, they know they’re lying. I write down their lies. I record their lies in a true and correct copy. And you know what? I’m the only one who keeps my oath. That’s me.” I had never thought about it before this very minute. “I made an oath, and I kept it. I made a vow to you, and I kept it.”
“I’m sorry—”
“That’s who I am, but you threw me away in favor of a liar.” I felt tears, but I blinked them away. “And I get it if you felt that way when I dropped out, but all our time together didn’t teach you anything different? All we went through together, even before Allison? Your sister, your mom, your dad? I was there for you, and it didn’t make one damn bit of difference? You know what your biggest crime is, honey? You haven’t been paying attention.”
Lucinda’s eyes flared with pain, and I knew I had hit home.
“Anyway, this isn’t the time. What do you want?”
Lucinda wiped a tear away. “I swear,” she said, her tone hushed, “I know it never should’ve happened, but I love you—”
I didn’t want to hear that. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“What do you have to say?”
Lucinda heaved a sigh. “It turned out Paul was very controlling, very demanding.”
“Aw, your fling wasn’t fun? My heart goes out.”
“No, it’s not that.” Lucinda pushed a strand of hair from her face. “He wanted me to leave you, and he was going to leave his wife. He wanted us to get married.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I shot back, angry. “I don’t need to hear this.”
“I’m getting to it. Please.” Lucinda flushed, upset. “The relationship turned bad pretty quickly, he was pushing me. He got angry about it, really angry. He’s used to getting what he wants.”
“Just spit it out.”
Lucinda inhaled, straightening. “At the end, he made a threat.”
My jaw clenched reflexively. “He threatened you?”
“No, he threatened you.”
I blinked.
Lucinda pursed her lips. “One time we were having this fight about him wanting me to leave you. He said, ‘I could have Jason killed. I know people.’ I didn’t think anything of it, but I didn’t know he represented people like Milo.” Her blue eyes sharpened. “What if Paul sent Milo to kill you? What if our carjacking wasn’t random?”
I felt taken aback. “But it was. We know why they carjacked us. They needed a car after the double homicide.”
“Isn’t it too coincidental? What if Milo targeted us to kill you? Let’s say he stops us in order to kill you, for Paul, but he changes his plans on the fly. He decides to kill Junior for his own reasons. Junior’s gun has only one bullet left, and like Dom said, he couldn’t finish the job because a car was coming. In other words, Milo double-crosses Paul.”
I followed her reasoning, but I didn’t see it. “It’s possible, I suppose—”
“Milo would tell Hart the same story that he tells Big George. That you put up a fight, the gun went off, and it killed Junior.”
“What about the double homicide?”
“You have to change the way you’re thinking about the night.” Lucinda bore down, the lines in her forehead deepening. “Dom told us the FBI has categories of when cars get carjacked. The most common reason is someone needing a getaway car. So if Milo wants to kill you, he has to stage a crime first, to avoid suspicion that you’re the real target. So he kills two people the police won’t worry about, like lower-level drug dealers.”
“He killed two people to avoid suspicion for killing a third? It’s crazy.”
“No, it’s counterintuitive, and that’s why it worked. The FBI assumed the double homicide was the primary crime and the carjacking was the getaway. They never suspected our carjacking was anything but random because of the double homicide. But I think it’s the other way around. We were the primary crime, and the double homicide was to make us look random.”
“I didn’t think of that,” I said, wondering aloud.
“You couldn’t have. You didn’t know I had an affair, and I didn’t know Paul represented Milo. If we hadn’t gotten into WITSEC, Milo would’ve killed you. It would’ve worked, if we hadn’t left.”
As horrible as it was, I sensed she was right.
“Jason, how did you know that Paul represented Milo? I couldn’t confirm that.”
“I used Marie’s login to get into the court system. Hart’s name is on the pleadings.”