Chapter 10
Six months later.
The Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, was surrounded by endless fields of winter wheat, dusted in fresh, powdery snow.
I sat at a scratched laminate table in the non-contact visitation room, the thick plexiglass partition reflecting the hollow lines of my face.
The heavy steel door on the opposite side buzzed open. Wyatt stepped through, wearing standard-issue khaki prison scrubs.
He had lost twenty pounds. His face was weathered, his dark hair streaked with silver at the temples, but the agonizing tremor in his shoulders was gone. The burden of his monstrous secret had been replaced by the quiet, heavy reality of his sentence.
He sat down and picked up the black plastic telephone receiver.
I lifted mine to my ear.
"Hi, Nora," he said softly. His voice sounded calm, stripped of all the frantic panic that had defined the last year of our marriage.
"Hi, Wyatt."
"How is Maisie?" he asked, his eyes immediately welling with tears. "Did she... did she like her new school?"
"She likes it," I answered, keeping my voice steady. "We moved to a small place near my sister in Madison. She started playing the piano again last week. A new teacher."
Wyatt swallowed hard, looking down at the metal table. "Thank you for letting her write to me. Her drawings... they're the only things on the wall of my cell."
"She deserves to know her father isn't a monster," I said. "Even if he was a coward."
Wyatt nodded slowly, accepting the blow without defense. "The plea deal was finalized yesterday. Twelve years for accessory after the fact and drug diversion. With good behavior, I might see parole in eight."
Clara Sterling and Richard Vance hadn't been so lucky. Wyatt's ledger and encrypted files had triggered a massive federal racketeering and attempted-murder indictment that brought down three board members and dismantled Vance Pharmaceuticals. Clara was facing forty years in maximum security without the possibility of parole.
Wyatt reached into his pocket and pressed something against the glass.
It was a faded, crinkled piece of paper, flattened out and taped along the torn edges.
The note I had packed beneath his fork six months ago: You don't have to take care of everyone. Let me have a turn.
"I keep it in my pocket every day," he whispered. "To remind me of what I gave away."
I looked at the note, my chest tightening with a dull, familiar ache. "Take care of yourself, Wyatt."
I hung up the receiver before he could reply, stood up, and walked through the heavy steel doors into the cold winter afternoon.
I got into my car, turning on the heater to thaw my frozen hands. The engine hummed, and I closed my eyes, taking the first deep, full breath I felt like I had taken in over a year. The nightmare was finally over. We were safe.
Then, my phone chimed on the passenger seat.
A notification from an encrypted messaging app I hadn't used since the trial ended.
I picked it up, frowning.
The message was from an unlisted European number.
Attached was a photograph taken inside a sunny, private rehabilitation clinic overlooking Lake Zurich in Switzerland.
Sitting in a wheelchair on a lush green terrace, smiling weakly into the camera, was Evelyn Vance. She looked healthy, her color restored, holding a fresh copy of today's Neue Zürcher Zeitung to prove the date.
Beneath the photograph was a voice memo, followed by a single line of text from an unknown sender:
May you like
Wyatt gave them the ledger to protect himself, Nora. But he didn't tell you why I was really on that table. Play the audio.
My thumb trembled over the screen as the cold winter wind howled against the windshield, the silence of the car suddenly shattering into a brand-new abyss.
