He was going to spend the rest of his life in prison for a crime that could not, even if it had succeeded, have gotten him one dollar of what he killed for.

There is a word for a man like that, and it is not clever, though he thought it was the truest thing about him.

Chapter 13 — The Secured Room

By late morning the contractions came in earnest, and the waiting was over for anything.

They let Beckett into the secured delivery room, and he had no idea the whole shift around him had changed — that the calm nurses and doctors moving through it were a police operation, that two officers stood just beyond the door.

He stood by my bed and played the devoted, frightened husband, holding my hand, murmuring encouragement, and I let him, because the recording was already three places safe and the only thing left was to let it all play out.