My father’s been admitted to the new center. I closed my eyes and let out a breath I felt I had been holding for weeks.

Two days earlier we had quietly moved her father to an independent hospital and paid six months of specialized care in advance.

The Pembrooks no longer had a gun to her head.

Whatever happened now, that much was already true and could not be undone.

Moving her father was, in truth, the thing I had insisted on doing first, before the evidence, before the contract, before any of it, and I want to explain why, because it was the whole hinge of the plan.

Everything the Pembrooks had over Yvaine ran through that old man in that bed.