Could she tell them what happened the Saturday night her husband died?

Would she mind going over that again?

They just needed a little clarification… Could she narrow down the timelines in her story a bit more?

She told them a deeply edited version of what had happened and stuck to it no matter how often they circled back around to question various points.

What happened the night of the doomed party. How she had emptied out the house safe when she left.

How Austin had found her at the hotel and chased her into the elevator. How she had filed a restraining order, hired Nina, found a place to stay, filed for divorce. She had given her hard copy of the Seychelles file to Nina, whose office files had burned in the fire, but she had kept a copy of all relevant documents in a zip file in her email account.

She left out any mention of Josiah completely. Funny. He was the most important part of it all.

Her composure cracked when she told them about the attack. Her memory had grown foggy on the details. (True enough.) She got away from Austin, drove her car back to the Airbnb rental, and realized she was in way over her head and needed to disappear.

True, true, and true. After spending months under Sarah’s tutelage, she knew the importance of telling at least some version of the truth. Even if they weren’t aware of it, many people had a rudimentary truthsense.

“About that,” Frank said. “How did you disappear so completely?”

At that point she stopped feeding them information. “I don’t have to explain that,” she said. “I felt like my life was in danger, so I did what I needed to in order to hide and survive.”

They didn’t like that, so they circled back around again, taking turns and questioning her for several hours. She asked for water and bathroom breaks when she needed them. Her pregnancy wasn’t showing yet, but she did have to pee a lot.

At one point, they brought her a cup of coffee that she left untouched, and later a sandwich from a fast-food place. She ate some of that.

As far as why she stayed away for so long… she had heard the news that her lawyer had been killed and her husband had died.

Frank had stepped out for a moment, so Rubio asked, “Why didn’t you come back when you first heard the news?”

“Because the money in that offshore account didn’t appear out of thin air,” she said flatly. “And Austin attacked me for a reason.”

“Had he ever been violent with you before?”

“No.”

“Where do you think the money came from?”

As Rubio asked those questions, the door opened and Frank returned, followed by another man who redefined the room when he stalked in.