All that to bury the truth, and the truth is the only thing that came out of it bigger.

Maya said it was not funny at all, really, and that it was the most reliable thing she knew about the truth, and they left it there.

She thought about it afterward, though, more than she let on.

A man had been willing to kill three hundred strangers to keep a set of facts from coming to light, and the facts had come to light anyway, and in the coming they had dragged into daylight a decade of rot that would otherwise have gone on quietly killing people one failed part at a time.

Sterling had believed, like every person who has ever tried to bury something, that the truth was a fragile thing he could destroy if he was only ruthless enough.