David could not explain it away.

Arthur’s decades of accumulated reputation, all that patiently hoarded good opinion, meant nothing against twelve seconds of his own voice threatening a witness.

That is why I let him corner me in that doorway.

That is why I lowered my eyes and let him believe he’d won.

I was not surrendering.

I was collecting the one piece of evidence that even the Hollis family, with all its money and all its practice, had no method for making disappear.

Chapter 10 — The Folder