Chapter 3: What the Fl**r Already Knew
Lisa stood up slowly.
Her ribs ached.
Her hands were steady.
She did not look away from Evelyn.
"You look relieved," Lisa said.
Evelyn descended two steps.
"You were always going to find out eventually.
Ryan said you were too smart to keep in the dark forever."
"And yet you spent six years trying."
"We spent six years keeping you safe." Evelyn's voice dropped.
"There's a difference."
"Safe." Lisa repeated the word like it tasted wrong.
"You hjt me with a baton."
"I needed you angry enough to act." Evelyn reached the bottom of the stairs.
"If you'd stayed calm, you would have waited.
And waiting would have gotten your brother kjlled."
Lisa's phone buzzed in her hand.
She didn't look at it.
"Tell me about the woman in my office."
Evelyn's jaw tightened.
"That is not my story to tell."
"Then whose is it?"
"Hers." Evelyn sat down on the bottom step, suddenly looking older than Lisa had ever seen her.
"And your mother's."
The word landed like something physical.
Lisa had not spoken to her mother in eleven years.
The last conversation had been three sentences long, conducted through a lawyer, over the question of a storage unit in Phoenix that contained nothing Lisa had ever wanted.
Her mother had been d\*ad — officially — for nine of those eleven years.
"My mother is gone," Lisa said.
"Your mother," Evelyn said carefully, "changed her name in 1987.
Then again in 1994.
Then again after the accident that was supposed to kjll her and didn't."
Lisa's investigator was still on the line.
She realized she had never ended the call.
"Are you getting this?" she said quietly.
"Every word," he said.
She put the phone on speaker and set it on the entry table.
Evelyn looked at it.
She didn't flinch.
"How long have you known?" Lisa asked.
"Since before Ryan proposed to you."
"He proposed because you told him to."
"He proposed," Evelyn said, "because the people who arranged your brother's disappearance needed someone inside your life.
Someone with clearance.
Someone you would trust." She paused.
"Ryan volunteered."
The word volunteered sat in the room like smoke.
Lisa walked to the window.
Outside, two Military Police vehicles were still parked at the curb.
One officer stood near the front gate, speaking into a radio.
"The gala," Lisa said.
"It was never about the money."
"No."
"It was about getting my brother into that building."
"Yes."
"And the woman behind my desk." Lisa turned around.
"She's the one who arranged it."
Evelyn looked at her hands.
"She's the one who arranged everything.
Starting thirty-seven years ago.
Starting with your mother."
Upstairs, a door opened.
Ryan's footsteps crossed the landing.
He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down at both of them.
His face was completely calm.
May you like
"Evelyn," he said.
"That's enough."
