“No, Pete…” is all I manage.
I know the video. I’ve seen how it plays out. But watching it again, now with Emma watching too, is like some real time YouTube reaction video.
The fight.
The struggle.
The stab to the neck. And the second. Third. Fourth.
The blood. The blood everywhere.
Then the silence.
Emma is the first to make a sound — an intake like someone being punched. Her hands bury her face. She falls to her knees, hands scrabbling at the carpet as if she can drag the picture back together. “No,” she wails. “No, no, no.”
I can’t breathe. My chest tightens.
Emma looks up at Pete. “You told me he was alive,” she says, the accusation collapsing into something that might be grief.
Pete’s face changes as the video plays. There’s a new clarity there, like a film negative burning into shape. He watches with an attention that is almost surgical. When the frames end, he doesn’t weep. He doesn’t fall apart. He’s very calm.
Emma scrambles up and throws herself at him, voice raw: “Why did you tell me he was alive? Why did you keep saying it? Why—”
He’s very quiet. His fingers flex around the arm of the sofa. “I hedged,” he says. The room goes very still — like the moment before a storm. “I hedged my bets.”
“What does that even mean?” Emma cries.
“Because you needed to believe that James had to be out of the way for you to find out where Chris was.” Pete calmly turns to me. “And you needed to believe that James was going to kill me.”
I shake my head, confused. “What?”
“I needed James gone. And between the two of you, I always thought one of you would do it eventually.”
Pete takes another sip of wine. “And now that he’s dead,” he says softly, “we can get down to business.”
Chapter 61
TOM
I stare at him.
“What do you mean… business?” The word doesn’t fit in the same room as the body cooling twenty feet away.
“Honesty.” He folds his hands in his lap, gaze steady at last, as though the signal has come back. “I think we all deserve some.”
Emma’s cry snaps into a blade. “Honesty? You lied to me for two years. You kept me circling like a dog tied to a post.”
Pete cocks his head. “And you kept coming. You wanted a truth you could live with. I offered one.”
I swallow what tastes like coins. “Pete, I think you’re in shock.”
“No,” he says, with the soft patience of a teacher. “I’m thinking very clearly. The wine helped.”
“Why did he kill Chris?” Emma’s voice cracks on the name. “Why did James do that?”
Pete looks at the blank screen and smiles a small, nostalgic smile that turns my stomach. “Because he loved me. He was protecting me. Because Chris was so violent to me. He was planning to kill me!” Pete cries, like he’s in panto.
Emma shakes her head violently. “What, what are you talking about? Chris would never hurt a fly!”
