I need you to know that I did try, desperately, to stop this. When I left you that night, even before I’d had any thought about that program, I called Agent Tirmizi and begged her to let me tell you. I begged her for some way to help me make sure my mistakes would not be irreparable. But as it turns out, Agent Tirmizi and her colleagues also had to keep many things hidden from me, including other sources they had, and a newly accelerated timeline for arresting Mr. Coster. I believed I had time to explain things to you, Meg. I made that promise to you fully intending to keep it. And if what I write next gets me into trouble with the people who read this letter before it gets to you, so be it: I would have broken my promises to them to keep my promise to you. I would have told you everything after your pitch. (How was your pitch?) I would have risked everything to warn you.

This is probably all the explanation I’ll be allowed to give you, unless I want this letter marred with black stripes of redaction or worse. But there is more I have to write, and I hope you will keep reading.

Last night I stayed awake for hours, worrying for you, wondering how it must be for you—reading all this in the news and not being able to reach me, all my promises to you unfulfilled. I kept thinking about what signs you’d send me now, if you’d write to me and tell me you thought it was all a mistake, too. I keep thinking, what if you writing that word all those many months ago wasn’t because you were warning me, or Avery? What if you were somehow warning yourself? What if you knew, somewhere deep down, that I would be a mistake in your life?

I hate to think it. But it might be true, and I am so sorry. I have brought to your life the kind of secrecy and upheaval you never wanted to experience again. The consequences you may suffer to your business and to your heart I will regret for the rest of my life. I have spent all these months involved in the investigation of a man who made selfish choices, choices that have ruined the lives of the people around him. When all this began, I never thought it would end with me feeling that I had something in common with a man as dishonest as Alistair Coster. But now I see so clearly that I do.