Chapter 22 - The Prisoner Who Smiled Too Soon
The visiting booth at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility smelled of floor wax, industrial bleach, and stale human despair. Vanessa sat behind the bulletproof partition, her once-voluminous auburn hair scraped back into an unforgiving bun, her prison smock hanging loose over hollow collarbones. But the smug, venomous tilt of her lips had not eroded.
"David," she purred into the black plastic receiver, her voice crackling through the intercom. "Did you bring me bail money, or did you just come to watch me peel potatoes in my mind?"
I didn't sit. I slammed the charred manila folder against the thick Plexiglas.
The sound cracked like a gunshot through the room. A corrections officer stepped forward, his hand drifting toward his baton, but I held up a single palm, keeping my eyes locked onto the woman I had shared a bed with for seven fraudulent years.
"Whose bones are in the family plot, Vanessa?" I demanded, my voice dropping into a register so cold it scraped my vocal cords. "Tell me right now, before I hand this file to the federal prosecutor and ensure your manslaughter charge gets upgraded to premeditated execution."
Vanessa barely blinked at the folder, but her eyes flickered down to the scorched edge. For a microsecond, the mask slipped. Pure, unadulterated panic flared in her pupils, swiftly masked by a brittle laugh.
"You really thought Elliot and I were the masterminds, didn't you?" she whispered against the glass. "You pathetic, blind fool. You always thought you were the smartest architect in the room, drawing blueprints while Claire was redesigning the whole damn house around you."
"The spine," I hissed. "Titanium wire fixation. That wasn't Claire."
"Of course it wasn't Claire!" Vanessa suddenly lunged forward, her handcuffs clattering violently against the metal counter. The guard moved in, gripping her shoulder, but she snarled at him, keeping her wild eyes pinned on mine. "Do you think Elliot and I could have pulled off thirteen months of corporate transfers, offshore trusts, and voice synthesis without someone feeding us the encrypted authentication codes from the inside?"
"You kidnapped her," I choked out. "You stole her life!"
"She gave it to us!" Vanessa screamed, spit hitting the glass. "She paid us ten million dollars from the Swiss escrow account to fake her abduction! She set the stage, David! She bought that abandoned warehouse in Pier 9! She told Marcus Hale which drugs to prescribe! And then she vanished with the rest of the thirty million, leaving Elliot and me holding the bag when the feds came knocking!"
"You're lying to save your skin," I said, though the marrow in my bones felt like liquid ice.
"Am I?" Vanessa grinned, a hideous, broken baring of teeth. "Then ask yourself this, darling: who took that picture in Montreal? Who sent it to your house? It wasn't the police. It wasn't Elliot—he’s crying into his pillow in Elmira. It’s her. She’s tying up loose ends. And do you know who the first loose end is?"
May you like
She tapped the glass directly in front of my heart.
"Noah. She never wanted the boy to follow her. She left him as bait to keep you busy while the statute of limitations on the offshore laundering expired. And now that you've dug up the wrong grave... she knows you know."
