All at once she seems spent. She slumps into the armchair, tears streaming down her face. Ted glances anxiously at Jill; she appears to be frozen. After a while Lara says, ‘I protected you.’
Ted waits for more, but she takes her time. She adjusts the bandage on her arm.
‘I didn’t tell them what he was really after. I told them he wanted to terrorize us and rob us. That he wanted money. I didn’t tell them about the digital files.’
‘Thank you,’ Jill whispers.
For just a second, Ted feels relief.
But then Lara says, ‘I’m going to talk to them again, this afternoon. I may change my story. I might tell them what really happened.’
Ted tries to remain cool. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘Because he fucking killed my husband!’ she screams.
Ted waits for her to calm down and says, ‘We didn’t send him, whoever he was. There are other… players involved. And we don’t know who they are.’
Lara leans forward and says coldly, ‘I know you murdered Greg for his money. I know there’s evidence of that out there somewhere.’ She turns to Jill and says, ‘Ben never believed you could have harmed Greg– he simply couldn’t imagine it.Isuspected, but I only ever wanted to support you, to protect you.’ She pauses and catches her breath, observing them both. ‘But now I feel differently. I don’t care about you any more. And you owe me.’
It hangs there, in the silence.You owe me.
Ted knows what she wants. She wants what everyone wants. She’s going to ask for money. He almost laughs. Everybody is out to get him. John, Lara, the blackmailer, whoever it is. The attorneys were right; they’re all coming out of the woodwork. He doesn’t deserve this. He’d always been a good person, and Greg had it coming. It’s not Ted’s fault that Greg was such a bastard and that he left him all that money. Why did all this have to happen to him? And now he’s almost too exhausted to deal with it all any more.
He doesn’t want to deal with Lara. He wishes he could strangle her right now, with his bare hands, in this very room. He’s not afraid to do it, but it’s a question of practicality. He asks himself what Jill would do if he reached for Lara’s throat. Would she stand by and watch? Would she urge him on? Or would she try to stop him, screaming and flailing at him? His murderous thoughts fade away because he has learned that it isn’t easy to kill someone. It’s easy enough todo, to cross that invisible moral line, but it’s not easy to get away with it. He can’t kill Lara. He’s stuck with her, at least for the foreseeable future. He must deal with the here and now the best he can.
He sits back in his chair. ‘What do you want?’ he asks.
Chapter Forty-Five
HE WATCHES INreal time, fascinated, grateful they never spotted the second camera in the front room. They think they’re safe, that they found them all. Those handheld devices, like the one he’s seen Ted scanning the house with, are useless if you don’t really know what you’re doing.
There are things going on here that he didn’t know about. He didn’t know about this. Who the hell broke into this woman’s house last night looking for the files? And killed her husband? They don’t have the footage, because he does. This is what you call collateral damage.
Obviously the Westcotts got someone to do this; they’re trying to find the files, to identify their blackmailer.
And whoever they sent, he’s ruthless.
Ted waits for John in their old spot by the Model Boat Pond in Central Park. If John attacked the Donleavys last night, he doesn’t want him anywhere near Brooklyn Heights. He’sseething with rage. This is all completely out of control. He would like to beat John Burnley to a pulp.
Lara drove a hard bargain. Ted hadn’t had much choice. Once she’d left, agreeing not to tell the police the truth, Jill had turned on him with a viciousness he hadn’t thought her capable of.
‘What the fuck?’ she yelled at him. ‘Ben isdead!’She railed at him. ‘Did you have anything to do with this? Tell me the truth!’ And she’d hammered her fists against his chest until he’d had to grab her arms and hold them still.
He’d told her a half-truth. He admitted that he’d asked John for help looking into the identity of the blackmailer. Jill had been furious, ranting at him about his stupidity, his poor judgement. He told her that John had promised that he would be discreet, that he’d promised no violence.
But John had promised nothing of the sort. Ted hadn’t even inquired. He’d been prepared to let John do whatever was necessary, as long as he solved the problem, and as long as it wasn’t Ted getting his hands dirty.
But he hadn’t solved the problem, he’d made it worse. Ted hadn’t anticipated anything like this. He’d thought maybe John would break into their house while they were out and look through their laptops, nothing more. John, he has learned, is a loose cannon. He can’t control him.
Lost in thought, he suddenly becomes aware of John approaching him. There’s no smile today, not even one of contrition. Ted speaks first. ‘What a shit show.’
‘So you’ve heard,’ John says.
‘Of course I’ve heard! Lara Donleavy was just at our house, telling us all about it. And your little home invasion is all overthe news. What thefuckwere you thinking?’ he hisses, his face close to John’s.
‘I was doing what you asked me to do, which was to find out who has the files. They don’t.’ He steps back, pulls out a cigarette, puts it to his lips, and lights it.
‘Did you have tokillhim?’
