We’re about to get very personal. A man confronted with accusations of adultery will often lie. Frank Flynn is pretty much insane in his hatred of Adam, so strike him and his tale. Janna Fong told me what she believed, but she didn’t have an ax to grind. Not that I could tell. She was on Team Sophie, but her now-dead best friend hadn’t given her any assault weapons for the assassination of her husband.

“Adam,” I say, without preamble, “were you having an affair?”

He shakes his head. “Seriously?”

This is hard, but it needs to be done. “It might be important,” I tell him.

He lets out a disgusted sigh. “It’s none of your goddamn business,” he says, digging in.

“It has obvious relevance,” Montrose says, a little gleefully. “What’s the story?”

Adam looks at the wall, his demeanor suddenly changing from defiant to embarrassed. He folds his arms over his chest. That quickly, there is a sheen to his forehead.

“Look,” he says, “I’m not proud of it. But yeah. All right. I had a thing with a coworker. It was meaningless. Work-related.”

That stops me. I wonder what kind of place SkyAero is if having an affair is considered work-related.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“My boss. Carrie LaCroix.”

“When was it?” Montrose asks.

“A few years ago,” Adam says.

“A few years ago,” Montrose repeats.

“That’s what I said.”

“Did Sophie know about your affair?”

“It wasn’t an affair. So no, Sophie didn’t. She didn’t know because it was nothing to me. Just something to do. Maybe advance my career. I don’t know why in the hell I slept with that woman, but she offered, and I said yes.”

“She offered,” Montrose says, his tone on the edge of sarcasm.

Adam narrows his gaze at Montrose. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably hard for you to understand that concept, but, yes, she was into me, and I took it.”

“And Sophie didn’t know?” I repeat.

“We never talked about it. I cheated on my wife. I’ll admit to that. I did. So put a big fat checkmark after my name. Lots of guys do. And if you’re trying to say that I had something to do with Sophie’s disappearance because of that, you would be barking up one more wrong tree.”

Adam gets up. His eyes stay pointed at me.

“I really expected more of you, Lee,” he says, shaking his head. “I never thought for one second out of all the people in the world that you’d shit on me. Jesus. Sometimes you can’t even trust your own instincts about people.”

“I’m just doing my job, Adam,” I say, a little afraid my voice will crack. Thankfully it doesn’t.