The chill from Sandra’s voice could be felt in the room. ‘Like I said, there’s nothing here for you to prove. I was trying to humor you, but now I’m done listening to you invent stories.’

Hal rolled his chair over until he was directly in front of Sandra. ‘You’re one of us, you know.’ By the expressions on everyone’s faces and the way they sort of settled back, Alyssa knew her team had already guessed what Hal was up to. ‘You know, it takes a lot less energy to tell the truth. Think about the weight that would finally lift. That feeling of being abandoned by both your father and your stepfather, not to mention the fact that Barry Campbell stole your brother from you, too, wouldn’t be as heavy.’ Hal clasped one of Sandra’s hands between both of his and lowered his voice. ‘I don’t think you meant to kill Hayden at all. It was an accident, and then you tried to cover it up because you didn’t think anyone would believe you.’

Alyssa watched Sandra’s defensive posture begin to crumble under Hal’s soothing tone. She’d witnessed firsthand how pointless it could be to resist falling under his spell; it was kind of like a flame trying to withstand a windstorm.

‘You reinvented yourself,’ Hal continued, ‘but then Gabriel Kensington discovered who you really were and was going to destroy everything.’ Without taking his eyes from Sandra, he dropped her hand and opened a laptop. There in full color was an array of photographs and articles about Alexandra Greene and Darren Pease’s accident. Hal clicked through to the last one where Alexandra was seen leaving the hospital after her final facial surgery. ‘These were in a file on Gabriel’s laptop.’

Next, he opened a document titled Phone Interview with Dr. Rojas dated Wednesday, October second. ‘Dr. Rojas was the plastic surgeon responsible for doing the extensive work on putting you back together, so to speak, and Gabriel was able to track him down. Now, you knew you’d changed, but you also knew no one would listen when the truth came out. So, you went to Gabriel, hoping to appeal to his sense of right and wrong. But he declined to listen. You tried to show him, didn’t you, how you’d evolved? But he refused to hear, refused to see. So, then you grew angry. What happened? Did you kill Gabriel and then have to kill Lydia to erase the potential for witnesses?’

‘I shot her first.’ A thunderous expression darkened Sandra’s face. ‘I found out with everyone else that the gun I used was actually registered to my father.’ Alyssa flashed back to the look of utter shock that had crossed Sandra’s face when the team had learned that bit of news. At the time, she hadn’t thought much of it.