Ivy went to the window, looked out. “Oh, I’m so much better than a broker. You think the hack I did on your world was something? You should be proud, Mom. You gave birth to a certifiable genius. I’ve forgotten more about computers than you will ever know. More than Jobs and Gates combined. I can make them do whatever I want. Attack. Siphon. Inform. All without a trace.”

“You left traces here,” Ethan said. “You changed the password on Sutton’s computer between the time you got into it for me and when I handed it over to the police. Ethan killed our baby was a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“I think it was highly appropriate, and I left the trace because I wanted you to know. Did you think I was going to let you walk away unscathed from all of this, either of you? Things have gone perfectly. Exactly how I planned, from start to now. The big finish.”

“Oh?” Sutton said, an eyebrow cocked. “So perfectly the police know who and what you are? They’re going to hunt you down like a dog.”

Ivy laughed again. Sutton realized she was enjoying this.

“Did you know, Mom, I was almost adopted once? It was a foster family, and I’d been so good. It happened when I was nine. I was theirs for less than three months before they sent me back. They didn’t like me. They thought I had an edge. That’s what they told the orphanage. I had an ‘edge.’”

“I can imagine,” Ethan said, sotto voce, but Ivy was lost in memory, and ignored or didn’t hear him. She was stroking her cheek with the edge of the revolver, gently caressing herself with the metal.

“They had a dog. Oh, don’t get all weepy, I didn’t hurt the dog. They were assholes. I put steak bones in their bed one night so the dog would attack them. How’s that for an edge?”

“You are utterly and completely mad,” Sutton said.

Ivy grinned, a perfectly sweet smile Sutton had seen on her face hundreds of times before. “Oh, yes, I am, thanks to you. You abandoned me. You didn’t want me. What sort of woman doesn’t want her child? Oh, that’s right. You. You’ve never wanted a child. Not then, not with Dashiell, and not now.”

“I was thirteen, Ivy. I was in jail. What did you expect, that the moment I got out I’d go searching for you and we’d live happily ever after?”

“Sutton,” Ethan cautioned, but Sutton wasn’t going to sit back and be cowed.

“Ethan, let’s be real. Ivy’s holding a gun. She’s already killed two people herself and had two more murdered in her name. We aren’t going to talk her out of killing us. Bullets in our heads are a foregone conclusion.”