late to lock up because someone had messed with the security cameras.
“I’m not as smart as you think I am,” I say. “But I’m not that stupid, either. If I had twenty million dollars, I wouldn’t take it to work. And I wouldn’t bury it, either. How big would that hole have to be? I can’t dig a hole.” I know this from experience. “Plus it’s impractical,” I continue. “Eventually I’d have to go back and dig it all up, hoping it hadn’t composted. I’m not digging a second hole.”
“So where is it?”
I hold up my hands, palms smooth, innocent. “Beats me.”
“I think you’re lying.”
I pop the last bite of pizza into my mouth. “I’m disappointed.”
“The pizza’s fine.”
“In you. Everybody wants the money. I hoped you were different.”
“You’ve gotta have a plan, Reese. You’re too smart not to.”
I jangle my shackled wrist. “The plan’s not working.”
“You don’t have enough money to last another three years cooped up here. You’re not working, you’re taking care of your father, thinking about travel—where’s the money come from in this scenario?”
“You saw my research. Yap is cheap. Get it?”
“I take back the funny comment.”
I finish my beer. “I have to volunteer tomorrow. I know you think no one cares about me, but they’ll notice I’m missing. They’ll call. Come over.”
“They won’t come over. You gave them a PO box as an address.”
Dammit. That’s true. “They’ll still call.”
“I’ve got your phone. I’ll handle it.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Chris has my burner phone. I toss those things away after every date. Lyla has my real phone number, same as the prison. And, if I’m lucky, that phone is buried in the couch cushions where it always is.
“I want to go,” I insist. “I like my job.”
“Sorry, that’s not how this hostage thing works. You don’t get to socialize.”
“Then what happens next? We’re ‘roommates’ indefinitely?”
“Just tell me where the money is and this all ends.”
“I told you I don’t know. I had nothing to do with the scheme. I didn’t know my brother gambled. I still don’t believe you. I think Johan and Davor are your brothers. Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.” I tick up three fingers, counting off the members of a happy, dumb family.
He rolls his eyes. “Why would Alex try to kill you?”
I flinch. I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times, but it’s my first time hearing it out loud. The first time someone asked the right question. And if he’s asking, it’s because he believes there’s a chance I’m not a murderer.
“To avoid this,” I mutter, swiping crumbs into a napkin and crumpling it in my palm. “So I wouldn’t have to face the fallout.”
“He didn’t think you could handle it.”
I shrug.
“Bullshit.”
I look at him, surprised.
“You can handle it,” he says. “How you’re going about things is a little fucked up, but you’re dealing. Alex tried to kill you because it’s a better fate than falling into Johan and Davor’s hands.”
“Why would that happen?”
“There are twenty million reasons, Reese. Do we really need to list them?”
“I don’t have the money!”
He slams his palm on the table. “You know where it is!”
“I don’t!”
“You’re lying. You graduated at the top of your class. Your top two clients at Carlisle Gale were among their best. You know your shit. If someone needed to hide money, you’re the person they’d turn to.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want to be a criminal? That maybe my dad knew it and kept me in the dark?”
“Yeah. It occurred to me. And then he got arrested.”
My heart stops. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he didn’t see the arrest coming, so he had to scramble. And, if you weren’t part of the plan before, you became part of it.”
“No.”
“Yes. Alex was the problem. You were the solution, Reese.”
“You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist. Flattering me isn’t going to make it real.”
“You know you were the first person he called when he was arrested? Not his lawyer, not your brother.”
I swallow. I do know that.
Chris leans in. “He never spoke to Alex after the arrest.”
“Alex was ashamed of him.”
“No. Alex was ashamed of himself.”
I try to see my brother as Chris saw him, but I can’t. Alex was light. He was happy. He was unburdened. He was a butterfly flitting through the sky until its wings tangled in a web. Then he was gone.
But my memories of Alex don’t mesh with the expression on his face in those final seconds. Despair. Determination. Dead.