nodded, but his pained look held more portent than just one parent.
“Not . . . both?” Danny mouthed the words in total disbelief.
Matt nodded again.
Danny’s face tightened, drowning with confusion. Then it just crumpled with profound grief. Matt had already told him about Bellinger’s murder. The triple whammy hit him real hard. He sank to the floor and gripped his head in his hands, feeling as if his veins were flooding with lava.
A more somber mood enshrouded them as Danny told Matt of his despair during those two years. How he’d tried to sneak an e-mail out to him and been caught. How he’d contemplated suicide. How they’d threatened him and drugged him after that.
“You’re here now,” Matt finally told him. “You’re out and you’re safe.” Matt smiled. “And that’s way more than either of us had a couple of days ago.”
“Tell me more. About Mom and Dad. About how it all happened,” Danny asked him.
IN AN ADJACENT ROOM, Rydell stewed alone. He’d found it as uncomfortable to be around Danny as Danny found it to be around him. He also had a lot on his mind.
It was over, that much was clear. Once Gracie returned, the story would blow wide open. And then, whichever way you looked at it, his life was over too. His role in it would be part of the story. A big part of it. There was no way anyone was going to shield him from it. Not Gracie, not Matt or Danny, not Drucker. And even if they’d wanted to, there was no way they’d be able to do it. Not in this blog-rich age. And he wasn’t prepared to run either. It wasn’t his style. Besides, there was nowhere for him to run to. No, he’d be there to face up to what he’d been a part of.
The hardest part of it all was thinking about what it would do to Rebecca. It would be nothing short of devastating. It would follow her for the rest of her life. His mind kept churning it, desperate to find a way to mitigate that, to keep her out of it, but there was nothing he could think of that could do that.
BY THE TIME GRACIE and Dalton finally joined them a couple of hours later, the reunion was a bittersweet, subdued celebration. Yes, they were all safe. Yes, Danny was alive—and free. And Gracie and Dalton were about to become superstars. But there was a downside to the forthcoming media feeding frenzy too. A downside well beyond Rydell’s very public downfall. One that looked far more daunting the more they talked about it.
In the background, a TV was switched on, replaying the evening’s events in an almost continuous loop, with all kinds of talking heads coming in and out to comment on it.
“What’s this going to do to all those people who were out there celebrating tonight?” Gracie asked, pointing at the screen, her voice edgy with concern. “And not just them, but everyone around the country who was tuning in. Everyone around the planet who’s been buying into Drucker’s scam, for that matter. What’s going to happen to them? How are they going to take it?”
“What’s the alternative?” Dalton countered. “We can’t let the lie run. We’d just be digging all those people a deeper hole for Drucker to push them into. The sooner we end this, the better.”
“I know.” Gracie nodded. “It still feels wrong. It’s lose-lose.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then spread her fingers out and massaged her forehead. “I hate this,” she groaned.
“Finch was murdered because of it,” Dalton reminded her.
“Vince too,” Danny added. “And Reece. And many others.”
Gracie heaved a ponderous sigh. “They were killed to keep it quiet until Drucker was ready to pull the cover off. And now we’re going to do it for him.”
“We have to do this,” Danny chimed in. “The longer it runs, the more painful it will be when the truth comes out.”
Gracie nodded grudgingly, then said to Rydell, “I’ll need you to go on the record. We’ll need the evidence.”
Rydell nodded somberly. “What choice do I have?”
She shifted her gaze across the room. “Danny?”
He nodded. “Hell, yes.”
Gracie acknowledged it, then slumped back in her seat, a frustrated, haunted pallor to her face.
Rydell turned to Danny. “How were they planning on doing this? Do you know? How were they going to expose him?”
“They made me design a debunking software. They were going to run it over him once they were ready