Page 129 of Conrad

“You killed Holden too.”

“He was leaving for Barbados. I couldn’t let him get away.”

“And you dumped him in my garage.”

“Felt like a good place.”

She shook her head. “And you set fire to my garage.”

“That got tricky, since you were out of town?—”

“Did you try to run me off the road?”

He made a face. “No. I would have gotten it done.”

Her eyes widened. “Then who?—”

He narrowed his eyes. Shook his head. “I told you it was getting messy.”

She fought with her voice, kept it cool, the podcaster in her taking over. “It doesn’t have to be messy. No one else has to die.”

“It’s gone too far. After Marcus was murdered, there was no turning back.”

Marcus.“Your brother wasmurdered?”

“Sarah’s friend Kyle killed him.”

She stilled, the pieces forming, connecting. “Your brother was the one who kidnapped me a month ago and tried to kill me.”

“You were digging too deep.”

Her breath left her. “Then why didn’t you kill me after I was found?”

“Everyone was watching. And for a while, you thought Kyle had killed Sarah. I didn’t want to interfere.”

“Until he was run off the road and shot—oh my.Youdid that too.”

“That was for Marcus.”

“Kyle wasinnocent.”

“Hardly. He was working for Swindle. Who was trying to cover everything up after his partner, Holden, told him about the real forensic report. He knew Edward was murdered.”

“I knew Swindle was tangled up in this.”

“Swindle was on the board of Quantex. And he knew Declan Stone. He was the one who told Stone to buy Axiom.”

“And my dad?”

“He felt bad for Edward’s mother and voted to invest.”

So he was innocent. A fist released in her chest. She should have trusted him. And then . . .Wait.“You killed Anton Beckett?”

“He contacted Swindle, told him that he’d gotten into Kyle’s cloud, and asked about the video. Swindle called me, told me to grab the drive.”

“And instead you killed him.”

Silence.

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