The prosecutor leaned toward the screen, and the careful professional skepticism on his face began, very slowly, to drain away, because whatever he had braced himself to see, it had not been this, and one thing was already unmistakable, even before the figure’s face came into view.

The person walking into that office, the person about to become a murderer on a recording that would outlive the crime, was not Elena Cole.

Chapter 17 — The Hood Comes Down

For a moment the figure kept its back half-turned, its hood up, its face in shadow, and the room around the laptop held its breath.

Then the man reached up and pushed the hood back from his head, and turned, and his face came into sharp focus under the desk lamp, clear and unmistakable and impossible to deny.

It was Richard Cole.