Joe Bridgeman was well aware of the role he’d played in what had happened today. He wasn’t blind to what he’d done. But Your Honor, he pleaded in the imaginary courtroom in his mind, I’m guilty with an explanation. When he speculated to Sandra about how he thought Ruskin never meant for things to get this out of hand—all bullshit, of course, given that Ruskin was not even remotely responsible for the sabotaging of the Arrival network—Joe was, in effect, formulating his own defense, in the event what he’d done became known. He could never have imagined the venality of the virus, its tremendous potential for harm.

He’d never have made a deal with Brandon Kyle had he known that anyone would get hurt.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Joe had asked Kyle during one of their meetings.

Kyle had laughed. “Some of the press may get squirted with windshield washer fluid. Maybe the doors won’t open. Maybe one of the cars will drive off by itself right into a telephone pole.”

“But no one’ll get hurt, right?”

“I can’t promise a tire won’t run over someone’s foot, but that would be about the worst of it. The last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt. Now, tell me again how much you said you need to put your mother in a home?”

“I wouldn’t call it a home,” he’d said. “Funny about that word. It’s so nice, except when you use it to describe a place to put parents. I like to call it a seniors’ living center. It’s a very nice place. Lots of activities. There’s the monthly apartment fee itself, then they provide meals, and she’s not as steady as she used to be so when she has to go to the bathroom—”

“Would three hundred thousand cover everything for a few years?”

Boy, would it ever.

He knew he should have told Kyle to get lost. In fact, he probably should have called the FBI and set up a sting. Corporate sabotage was a crime. But Joe had to give Kyle credit. The man had come prepared. A shrewd operator, that’s what he was.

Kyle had engaged the services of a private detective agency—Joe believed it was the same one that film producer mogul hired to discredit all those actresses accusing him of sexual assault—to find out everything they could about Lisa Carver. Bugged her penthouse, outfitted it with hidden cameras, including one in the ceiling directly above the kitchen island where Lisa most often worked on her laptop. That was how they figured out her password and how she changed it every day. They’d done some digging, learned Lisa Carver gave a child up for adoption when she was in her teens, twenty-two years earlier.

Zenia.