“I am telling you that laboratory result is wrong.

It has to be wrong.” I slowed my steps, though I did not dare stop, and I heard the raw edge in his voice, the sound of a man whose plans had just struck something they had not expected to strike.

Whatever the test he had run in secret had told him, it was not what he had wanted to hear, and it had frightened him.

The study door flew open and Christopher stormed out, so consumed by whatever he had just learned that he passed within a few feet of me without seeing me at all, and rushed out of the house to his truck.