“So you made it look like a kidnapping.” Myron tried to keep his voice steady.

She didn’t bother to answer.

“How did you get Vada to cooperate?”

“I told her that the police would say she was responsible. She was supposed to watch the kids. I told her that they’d blame her and put her in jail. I said it was best for her to do what I said. To protect herself. Vada was scared, too confused to argue. By the time she had second thoughts, she was already in too deep.”

“So you clean up the scene. I assume there was blood.”

“Not a lot. And it was in the woods. I cleaned it up.”

“You go over your story with Vada. You tie her up in the basement. You leave and call Brooke. You tell her that you just got to the house and no one is answering the door.”

“That’s right.”

Myron swallowed. “Where was Patrick?”

“I took him home. I told him to hide until his father got there.”

“And Rhys?”

Nancy’s eyes met his. There was no waver as she said, “I put him in a trash can in the back of our garage.”

The rest was obvious.

“When Hunter got home, did he try to talk you out of it?”

“Yes. He wanted to confess right away. But by then, it was too late. I had already faked the kidnapping. These things—they snowball. It wasn’t Hunter’s fault. He’s a weak man. He couldn’t handle what we did. He started to drink. You can probably figure out the rest. It wasn’t hard to get a fake ID, though it took some time with the cops around. Hunter kept Patrick at the lake. Eventually we snuck him out of the country. His new name was Paul Simpson.”

“Why did you bring him home now?”

She shrugged. “There were too many close calls. The background checks at the school were getting stricter. People were starting to ask questions. We couldn’t keep it up forever. Francesca needed to know her brother was alive. But mostly, Patrick wanted to come home too. So Hunter and I talked about it. We were going to have him just walk into a police station and make up a story about escaping. But that would lead to even more questions.”

“So you sent that anonymous email to Win.”

“I knew Win had never given up. If he found Patrick—if he rescued him—it would all be more believable. That’s what I thought anyway. So I set it up so Win would be at King’s Cross at the same time as Patrick. It wasn’t hard to find a spot. You can look online and find out where teenage prostitutes hang out.”

“That didn’t go as planned.”

“To put it mildly, it backfired,” she said. “When Win killed those men, Patrick ran. He called me in a panic. I told him to find a hotel and stay put. But that Fat Gandhi found him.”

“So when you tearfully thanked me for saving his life—”