I take off Brady’s gag. He reaches up and rubs at his mouth, wincing as his fingertips massage a tender spot.

Mathias turns away as he pulls over a seat. It’s a deliberate move. He could have placed the chair sooner, but he puts his back to Brady.

Brady’s gaze flicks to me. He expects to see my hand resting on my gun. When it isn’t, he looks back at Mathias, now tugging the chair over, his attention elsewhere. He sees that, and he frowns, as if to say, I don’t understand.

Good.

Mathias sits. I back up to perch on the edge of my desk. Brady looks from me to the older man. As he does, his sweep covers the back and front doors.

His nostrils flare, as if he quite literally smells a trap, as if Dalton and Anders are poised outside those doors, praying he makes a run for it.

“Detective Butler says you have been very eager to tell your story, Oliver,” Mathias says. “Now is your chance.”

Silence. When it reaches ten seconds, I open my mouth, but a subtle look from Mathias stops me. Five more seconds pass. Then:

“Is there any point?” Brady says. “You don’t want to hear it. You’ve all made that perfectly clear by the fact you’ve kept me gagged for seventy-two hours. I try to say a word when it’s removed at mealtime and she”—a glower my way—“threatens me with starvation.”

“She is Casey Butler. She is a detective who has been placed in a very frustrating position, forced to babysit you when she has other work to be done.”

“And I’m supposed to, what, apologize for the inconvenience of my captivity?”

“No, you are supposed to recognize that Detective Butler has done nothing to deserve the inconvenience of your care. And recognize that she attempted to relieve the indignity and discomfort of that gag, and you called her . . .” Mathias purses his lips. “I will not repeat it. It is rude. Uncalled for in any circumstances, but particularly these.”

“I was pissed off. I vented.” He glances my way. “I apologize.” His gaze swings back to Mathias. “But you aren’t interested in what I have to say. Neither of you is. You’re treating me like a child throwing a tantrum. Let me get it out of my system, and maybe I’ll shut up. Gregory Wallace has convinced you all that I’m guilty, and the only thing that surprises me about that is how easy it was.”

Brady pauses. “No, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen it my whole life. Got a problem? Drown it in money, and you’ll drown all doubts. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and so on. How much is Greg paying you?”

“Hot tubs,” I say. “He’s paying us in hot tubs and big-screen TVs. Oh, and diamond necklaces, to wear to the next town picnic.”

Brady’s eyes narrow.

I wave at the police station. “Look around. We don’t have electric lights or gas furnaces, and that’s not for lack of money. We have what we need. You’re here because of what you did. Not because we’re being paid to take you.”

“No, I’m here because of what I know.”

“Which is?”

“Does it matter?”

“Your plan is ill-advised,” Mathias murmurs.

Brady turns to him. “And what is my plan? You obviously know, so how about letting me in on it. Maybe it’ll be something I can use, which is a damned sight better than my plan—the naive one where I thought you people might be smart enough to question the lame-ass story my stepfather gave you.”

“It does not seem ‘lame-ass’ to me,” Mathias says. “Uninspired and unoriginal, and yes, that is the colloquial definition of lame, but I believe the word you meant was ‘dumb-ass,’ implying anyone who believes the story is not very bright, rather than that the crimes themselves suggest a lack of intelligence on the part of the criminal.”

“What?”

“Is my accent impeding your comprehension? Or are you simply proving my point?”

“I’m not going to sit here and be insulted—”

“Yes, you will. We are not forcing you to speak. I spent my career interviewing psychopaths, sociopaths, and garden-variety sadists, and I always told them that they were free to cut the session short at any time. Do you know how many did?” Mathias holds up his thumb and forefinger in a zero. “But please, feel free to show some originality in this, if you could not in your crimes.”

Brady seethes, and it is like watching a weasel in a cage, being poked with a cattle prod. All it has to do is retreat to the other side. Instead, it snarls and twists and snaps at the prod. That may feel like grit and courage to the weasel, but to an outsider, it looks like submission. Mathias holds the power; Brady is trapped.

“Ignore him,” I say to Brady, and he starts at the sound of my voice, as if he’s forgotten there’s someone else in the room.

“He’s baiting you,” I say. “He gets little amusement up here, and you’re his entertainment for the day.”

Brady’s lips tighten. He wants to smirk and lean back in his chair and say he isn’t falling for the good cop, bad cop game. But my expression doesn’t look like the good cop’s.

Seconds tick by. Then he makes up his mind and twists to face me.

“I can’t fight a bold-faced lie,” he says. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Try.”

“How? We’re not in San Jose right now. We’re thousands of miles from it. So how exactly do I prove I wasn’t the shooter?”

Mathias clears his throat, and I know my poker face has failed. Mathias’s throat-clearing pulls Brady’s attention away, and I recover.

“Try,” I say. “Tell me what proof they had against you. What they were using to charge you.”

Brady laughs. There’s a jagged bitterness to it. The weasel has realized that attacking the prod does no good, but it can’t help itself. It has no other recourse. Keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result, knowing how futile that is.

“Greg said I was being charged? Of course he did. It’s not like you can call up the district attorney and ask. Not like you’d expect an honest answer if you did. We can neither confirm nor deny—that’d be the sound bite, and you’d take it to mean yes, they have a warrant out for my arrest, when the truth is”—he meets my gaze—“it’s like me telling this old man that you think he’s hot. You know it’s bullshit. I know it’s bullshit. But he’d love to believe it, and there’s nothing you can say to defend yourself.”

“Actually, no,” Mathias says. “I find the thought rather alarming. I would have to disabuse Casey of it immediately, and inform her that, as lovely as she is, I really do prefer women who were born before I graduated university.”

“Whatever,” Brady says. “My point is that I wasn’t even on the investigators’ radar. Why would I be? What’s my motive? Did Greg even bother to mention that? ’Cause I’d love to hear it.”

“Haven’t you asked him?” Mathias says. “Or are you testing us? Seeing if your stepfather’s story changes, depending on the handler? That would be odd, given that we could simply compare notes, as they say.”

“Do you think any of my ‘handlers’ were talking to me?” He shakes his head. “Everybody’s looking for the shooter, so it was an easy story to tell. Greg just had to move fast, before they caught the real guy. Get me up into Alaska, some off-the-grid place where no one can check the news.”

“But someone did tell you what your stepfather said.”

“No, I overheard two guards talking about it. Couple of jarheads, must have thought gagging me also took away my ability to hear. When they fed me, I tried to reason with them. They gave me this.” He pushes aside his hair to show a scabbed gash. “The gag stayed on for the next eight hours. No food. No water. That’s what a guy who shot six kids deserves. Which is why Gregory used that story. The whole damned country wants that bastard to burn in hell.”

“What’s your stepfather’s motive, then?” I ask. “You said you know something.”

He eyes me. Sizes me up. Finds me lacking and eases back into his chair as he says, “That’s my leverage, and I’m not giving it up until it’ll get me somewhere. For now, let’s go with the obvious motive. The one that’s partly true. Money.”

“From what I understand, it’s his company. Your mother married into it.”

“No, it was my father’s company. My biological father. Gregory Wallace was his employee. After my dad died, Greg took his wife and his company. But my dad made sure no one would get their hands on my inheritance. On my twenty-eighth birthday, I get a trust fund of fifteen million. Do you know how old I am now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Yep. Last year, I heard something that made me suspect there wasn’t fifteen mil in that fund anymore. I tried investigating. Greg blocked me. Gave me some song and dance about the stock markets and poor investments my father made. He promised there will be plenty of money but . . .”

“Not fifteen million.”

“Far from it, I bet. That’s part of the reason I’m here. I’m not a stand-up guy. I’m a bit of an asshole. But I’m not a sociopath. That would be the guy who sent me here.”