Every time my brother-in-law drove me home, I would lose consciousness and wake up with unexplained aches and pains. My husband would only laugh and say, “You’re just out of shape, that’s all.” After the fourth ride, I secretly slipped a voice recorder into my purse and said nothing. That night, I listened to a phone conversation between the two of them that revealed my blackouts had never been accidental.

The investigator, a quiet woman named Beth Chao, nodded.

“It appears in the documents.

We still need the contracts and internal records to establish the purpose.”

I wanted to demand that she call it what it was.

Then I remembered the way Julian used uncertainty as camouflage.

Beth was being precise, and precision was what might finally take his camouflage away.

A separate payment caught my eye.

It went not to the annex but to a private storage company in Fort Worth.