“I mean, Ned pulls you into this business. Even on the edge, it’s bad for you if you’re caught. You’d be arrested. You’d be charged. You probably can’t get a lawyer as good as mine.”

She waits. She tries to remember to breathe.

“What if your dad or mom found out about that and went to talk to Danielle about it? Maybe at some time when you and your brother and Ned wouldn’t be around to witness it?”

The air has all gone from the house. Marland stands like something out of space and time. “You’re just making this up.”

He holds up a phone and turns the screen toward her. A video. She sees her front porch, a dark figure emerging from the house in her father’s coat, hood up, walking to Danielle’s house, and Danielle coming out in her coat and scarf and the two of them walking together. Toward the park.

“That’s not real,” she says.

“It is,” he says. “I lucked into your dad showing himself, what with keeping an eye on Danielle so she didn’t interfere. So, if I show this to the police, your father has a problem. If I don’t, no one has a problem. I need a kid in this operation. You’re the only one Ned confided in. Be mad at him, not me.” His voice softens. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll keep all your earnings in an account. That account will be the front for a small company that ends up giving you a full scholarship to the college of your choice. You’ll never have to touch the money; your parents will never know. If there’s no money to trace back to you, you’ll likely be safe.”

Likely, she thinks. “There is another explanation,” Julia says. “My dad would never hurt her. Or anyone. I know him. I know the man he is.”

“You think you do, but people disappoint us all the time. To protect you, he’d kill. Nearly every parent would.”

She thinks quickly. The whole point was to extricate herself from this mess. But everything has changed. She has to get that video from this man, destroy it and every copy he might have. And she can do that only by getting closer to Marland.

Choose and change the course of your life, she thinks.

“I want Ned’s phone he used to contact me in exchange for this video,” Marland says. “And then we can peacefully coexist.”

“Ask Ned for it.”

“His mother took it from him and Ned hasn’t found it. I can’t exactly be around him right now and he can’t come to me.”

And did you kill her before you could get that phone back? Julia’s terrified. But this is her chance.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll help you.”

28

Iris