I thought about what Ben had hissed at me. What Caroline was doing was illegal. You want to make that fact public and burn down your sister’s reputation? “I don’t know.”

“Your sister was the public relations director,” Reagan said. “There’s no reason for her to even . . . oh, wait. Hello there.”

“What is it?”

“Take a look.” Reagan angled the screen so I could see it better. “The operating costs are lower, which is good news, but look at the cash they’re raking in.”

I peered at it. “More zeroes.”

“Lots more! Which would be great if this spreadsheet was for a different continent or time period. But it’s not.”

“What are you saying?”

“If this is real, Thraxton International is keeping two sets of books.”

I gulped. “For what? Tax fraud?”

“Maybe.” Reagan scanned it over. “Or it could be to raise capital. No one’s lending them money with that first balance sheet, but the second one looks like a good bet.”

“I don’t understand why Caro would give this to me. Or why she’d even have it in the first place.”

“Maybe it’s leverage over Theo.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. But I knew Theo had left his family’s business. Maybe the tax fraud stretched back years and implicated him—he was the family member with the fancy degrees. But it seemed like this information would mostly hurt the in-laws Caro loved rather than the husband she loathed.

PART TWO

PART TWO

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

—George Eliot

CHAPTER 21 DEIRDRE

CHAPTER 21

DEIRDRE

On Friday, I woke up at five a.m. to a text from Ben Northcutt. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, he wrote. Want to get coffee today?

I wanted to ask how he’d gotten my number—because I sure hadn’t given it to him—but I was exhausted and fell back into a fitful sleep.

When I woke up at seven, a text from T-Rex had just come in: You’re fired.

I was furious, but I wasn’t surprised. There was a numbness that had settled into my bones whenever I contemplated my job and the many things I hated about it. But seeing this two-word text highlighted its awfulness. I switched to another app and checked my bank account. It was anemic. I got paid every two weeks, but normally Aubrey danger pay went into my account within twelve hours. It wasn’t there.

I shot back, Is this a joke? even though I knew it wasn’t.

T-Rex’s response came through in a minute. You know what you did.

He could only have meant Aubrey. Nothing else had gone wrong with any of my clients.

You owe me money, I wrote back.

There was no response.