And there was a version of that night, easy to imagine, in which I lived up to the reputation, in which I lay in wait with a weapon and let Harrison walk into a room and killed him where he stood, in self-defense, a dying doctor stopped by a resurrected billionaire.

It would even have been legal, arguably.

And it would have solved nothing.

Because a corpse cannot testify, and a killing, however justified, would have muddied everything, turned the story from a clean tale of a murder plot exposed into a messy one of violence answered with violence, given the surviving conspirators and their expensive lawyers a thousand threads to pull.

More than that, though, it would have made me into what they already believed I was, would have let them be right about me, would have answered a conspiracy of murder with a further death and called it justice.