“Investigators?”

Behind them, the elevator doors opened, and two investigators stepped out, and Phoebe Reed walked between them, holding a sealed evidence packet in both hands.

She crossed the hallway to the three of them, unhurried, and she stopped, and she said, in the calmest voice in the building: “I believe you three already know what this concerns.”

Arthur stumbled backward into the wall.

Fiona folded down into a chair as though her legs had stopped agreeing to hold her.

And Flynn, at last, understood — I saw the understanding arrive on his face through the video feed — that the woman he had watched lying broken and helpless on his foyer floor had never, at any moment, been helpless at all.