justice. It’s vengeance. It’s a slippery slope to anarchy.”
“An eye for an eye.”
“And you are destroying your own soldiers. I talked to Michael Thompson. He didn’t betray you—he’s a true believer. He is so filled with pain over the loss of his daughter that he is but a shell of a man. A steel shell, fighting your battles.”
“They are his battles.”
“He should have gotten help. He’s still suffering, every day. He lost the most precious thing in the world to him, his daughter, to an evil predator who should have been locked up. Yes, the system fails. I hate that it does. But you destroyed Michael’s soul.”
“Had someone killed the evil that raped and murdered little Sarah when he first committed his heinous acts, she would still be alive. She would be graduating from high school this year.”
This was where Jonathan could sway her. The old adage, if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you? Who said no?
It wasn’t an argument she could win with him so she said, “I am working within the system to change it.”
“A noble, if imperfect, calling.”
“I take pleasure in putting bad guys behind bars. Criminals like Jimmy Hunt. While I wasn’t a part of his investigation, I helped take down his criminal network and I’m damn proud of that.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You worked with Hunt for the last year to orchestrate this plan, and I don’t understand why. You, of all people, working with someone like Jimmy Hunt.”
“I would consider the relationship akin to, say, a criminal informant.”
“Who has his own twisted way of looking at the world. And you helped him escape from prison.”
“Did I?”
“Don’t lie to me, Jonathan. Do you remember Kate Donovan?”
“Of course. She married your brother, didn’t she?”
“She’s traced your shell corporations. She’s brilliant, and more, she’s determined. So we can prove that—financially—you gave $300,000 in two installments to Jimmy Hunt. We’ve traced the money that Michael Thompson was paid. We know, for example, that you’ve created a trust for his other daughter and paid into it every year that he has been working for you. We know that Colton Thayer works for you. We know that he met with Jimmy Hunt at Victorville prison. We’re getting the surveillance logs from Houston for the visitors that Michael Thompson had—we have the names, and one name is, not surprisingly, fake. My guess? It’s Colton. It’s only a matter of time and persistence before I find the truth. And I will.”
She was bluffing on the Thompson surveillance. Houston didn’t have video surveillance from a year ago. Victorville did and Megan had already requested it. Colton made one big mistake—he used the same false ID both times, but she didn’t say that.
Wisely, Jonathan didn’t speak.
She said, “Why, Jonathan? Even though we had differences, I never thought you’d hurt me.”
“I would never hurt you. Lucy, please don’t think that Sean’s crimes had anything to do with you.”
“Are you really going to play that game? Sean didn’t kill Mona Hill; we now have evidence. A witness who saw Elise Hunt. The woman who planted the gun in Sean’s plane confessed. Sean didn’t set up the escape; we have evidence that it came from a corrections officer in Beaumont. Kate proved the phone in Sean’s cell was a plant, that it wasn’t used to hack into the system. Sean didn’t kill the guard in the bus; we will have the evidence because the best people in the FBI are working on retrieving the corrupted digital files. Everything on that bus was recorded. So I ask you, Jonathan, why did you want to punish me?”
“Sean does not deserve you.”
“Shouldn’t I be the judge of that?”
“Sometimes, our children are blind to the truth.”
“I am not your child.”
He stared at her. There was pain and heartbreak and more in his eyes. She shielded her empathy for him. She’d always empathized with Jonathan because he lost his daughter. Because he understood things about her that she had only been figuring out when she was in college. She missed her past relationship with the senator she admired so much … but he was gone. Had it all been a lie?
“You will be better off without him. I know it’ll hurt for a while, but you’re strong, Lucy. You’re a survivor.”
Her fear grew exponentially. “Where is Sean? Jonathan! What did you do to my husband?”
Lucy heard laughter. She had been so focused on Jonathan that she hadn’t heard the door open; neither had he.