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Margaret gasped.

Kaitlan’s lips parted. “No way!”

“You got a better idea?”

“No, but—”

“Then I suggest you listen to what I have to say.”

“You can’t.” Kaitlan shoved forward on the couch. “It’s dangerous!What if it doesn’t work? What if he gets here and realizes he’s been set up—”

“It’ll work.”

“But the minute he sees me …”

“He’s not going to see you. Or Margaret. He won’t know anyone else is in the house. It’ll just be him and me.”

Kaitlan stared at her grandfather. Determination and stubbornness hardened his features. She knew the look all too well. No matter her arguments, he would not be stopped.

But he had no idea what he was getting into.

She folded her arms. “You cannot be alone with him. I’ll go back to my apartment and meet him myself before I let you do that.”

“You can’t!” Margaret cried.

“No, you won’t.” The sereneness in her grandfather’s expression astounded her.

In that instant his soul shimmered, then blazed before her, as if the sun itself chased away its shadows. Kaitlan went weak.

He knew exactly what he was doing. He understood the danger. And that was a chance he was willing to take.

For her.

Part 3

Deception

forty-four

Margaret opened her eyes to sickly dawn.

Her night had been fitful, plagued by wraithlike dreams not fully formed. As she gazed blearily at the ceiling she couldn’t remember a single detail, but they haunted her just the same.

The clock read 6:45 p.m. Four hours of sleep. Her head felt like mush.

She and D. and Kaitlan had talked past 2:00 a.m., discussing D.’s scheme. There wasn’t much to it, really, and that’s what petrified Margaret. Yet he insisted it would work.

They could not unequivocally prove Craig did the murders. But they could gather enough circumstantial evidence for the California State Police to be forced to take a look at the situation.

Especially with the media involved.

Craig’s biggest mistake was hacking into D.’s manuscript—and using Leland Hugh’s black and green fabric for the killings. D. had already gathered information from some key phone calls. The hacking was likely on his own computer, he reported, not the online data storage site, which would employ heavy encryption to guard against such theft. The house’s internal wireless network had long been secured, but it wasn’t completely infallible. Still, the hacker would have faced the challenge of “pushing” a Trojan Horse or some other kind of spyware onto D.’s computer.

Margaret could believe his own computer was the vulnerable point. He wouldn’t let her on it, and likely he hadn’t kept up with security updates.

He could prove the hacking with the help of a savvy computer crimes technician, D. said. The tech would need a couple hours to run his software, looking for the spy program. The harder issue was tracing where it had come from, but thanks to brand-new technology that could now be done.

D. would present this proof to Craig, threatening to call the Sheriff’s Department over the theft unless Craig admitted what he’d done and promised to stop. Craig’s confession would be secretly filmed by a local TV reporter. A copy of that tape and D.’s manuscript—along with the photos Craig had so thoughtfully chosen to give them—would be taken to the state police. Kaitlan would tell them her full account. They would have to investigate. With the TV station blowing the story wide open, the Gayner chief of police wouldn’t be able to keep the lid on evidence they hadn’t pursued. Public pressure would mount to find the truth.

“But why would Craig admit to the hacking in the first place?” Kaitlan had pressed. “He knows that manuscript could tie him to the fabric.”

D. smiled sagely. “But he doesn’t know I know about the fabric. He has to meet my demand and confess in order to contain me. If I pressed charges, the media would be all over the story. Every point of my manuscript—including the fabric—could be made public. And some homicide detective on the Gayner police force would wonder at the coincidence.”

Amazing, Margaret had thought—that D. had been able to logic through all this.

Kaitlan thought the plan absurd. “So you tell him that’s why you really brought him here, get his confession, and see him to the door. And you expect this maniac, the guy who wants to kill me, to just go along with it?”

D. reared back his head. “I write dialogue for a living, girl! I’ll finesse the conversation. I’ll look at his manuscript first and give him some pointers. When I bring up the hacking it’ll be with disappointment, not anger. Just an unfortunate detail I choose to deal with quietly, between him and me. He’ll do what I ask because he’ll want to keep it that way.”

“Something will go wrong.”

“No, it won’t.”

“You don’t know that!”

D.’s features blackened. “How many evil antagonists do you think I’ve created in my lifetime, girl? You think I can’t keep a step ahead of this one?”

“This isn’t a book!”

“I know that!”