Page 23 of Black Hearts

Dwyer winced at the thought. “I won’t. Just tell me what to say,” he muttered.

I went through the exact wording of what he needed to say, depending on what the other man said or asked during the conversation. I made him rehearse it a dozen times. Then I grabbed his phone out of his pants pocket and held it out. “Tell me the passcode to get in.”

“6401.”

Once I was in his phone, I scrolled through his list of contacts until I found one named William. I held the phone up to him. “Is this the right number?”

Dwyer nodded bleakly. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m gonna put it on loudspeaker.” I pressed dial, then hit the loudspeaker button and put the phone in front of Dwyer.

A man answered only seconds later. “Where the fuck are you, Greg?” he barked.

“I… I’m stuck at work,” Dwyer said. He nervously cleared his throat. “Have to keep up appearances.”

The man grunted. “Hmph. Right. I still can’t believe this shit. What the hell are we paying these morons for? They lost the fucking Heartbreaker. The one fucking guy we need. And you know, I actually hold you responsible for that. If you’d hung around and made sure it all went to plan instead of running off with the Riley girl, it might’ve worked. Where is she, anyway?”

Celeste had a distant expression on her face, as if she vaguely recognized the voice on the other end of the line but couldn’t quite put her finger on where she’d heard it before.

“She’s dead. I dealt with her as planned,” Dwyer said. “No one will find her for a long time, and when they do, it’ll look like a suicide. I made her write the note and everything.”

“Good.”

“Anyway, I was calling about our Heartbreaker situation. Magnusson isn’t even our guy, so we can stop looking for him.”

“What?” the other man said sharply. “How is that possible? You said—”

“I know what I said, and I was sure of it at the time. But it’s not him. He had Celeste for all those weeks, yes, and that’s probably why he ran from our guys, but he’s not our killer.”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“I got a letter at the office today, from the real Heartbreaker. It said not to tell anyone about it, and that he’d kill my family if he found out I did, but obviously I’m not gonna keep this to myself. I had to tell you, at least.”

“And? What’d it say?”

“He was taunting me. He knew I was using West to try and find him, and he fed him false information to make it seem like Magnusson could be our guy, just to play with us. Get this: he said he’s one of our own.”

“What?”

“He’s one of us. Inner circle. He’s been playing with us this whole time. All these years, he could’ve killed any one of us at any time. But he likes to play games.”

“Bullshit.”

“No bullshit. I actually can’t believe I didn’t realize earlier. Just think about it. We’ve wondered for years how he was finding us; how exactly he knew who we were and what we do. Now we know. He wasn’t discovering things along the way. He always knew, from the very start. He’s been there all along, right under our noses. One of us.”

The other man was silent for a moment. “Shit,” he finally said. “Fucking shit. No, I… I can’t believe it.” As predicted, it was working. He was clearly unnerved; his croaky old voice had gone up slightly in pitch.

“Look, I didn’t at first either, but he left something else in the envelope to prove it. It’s a ring that used to belong to John Riley. He stole it from him when he murdered him, and he’s kept it this whole time. Fifteen fucking years.”

The other man let out a long, shaky breath. He was thoroughly rattled now. “Fuck. Well, obviously it isn’t you, and it isn’t me, but there’s still what… forty-seven others it could be? What’s our membership at these days?”

“Forty-nine including us, so yes.”

“What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“I have an idea. We put the word out to everyone that there’s a compulsory meeting in a couple of weeks at the mansion. We won’t tell them why, and because we’re making it so far in the future, it won’t seem urgent and therefore suspicious. Once they’ve all arrived, we’ll try and figure out who it might be. If it comes down to it, we’ll keep them all fucking locked in that ballroom until we figure it out.”

“What if he doesn’t show?”

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