“When we came in that room, the electrical tape was at your feet, Wesley. That means someone had either been about to bind your feet and forgot, which I find unlikely, or you—you, Wesley—heard us come through the door, popped the racquetball in your mouth, considered binding your feet, but then figured you might not have time and went for the rope on one wrist instead. Only one of your wrists was bound, Wesley. And why? Because a man can’t tie both his wrists to opposite arms of a chair.”

He studied our reflections in the pond. “Are you done?”

“Pearse said I couldn’t see the whole chessboard, and he was right. I’m slow on the uptake sometimes. But I see it all now, Wesley, and it was you pulling strings from the get-go.”

He tossed a pebble at my reflection, turned my face into ripples.

“Ah,” he said, “you make it sound so Machiavellian. Things are rarely that way.”

“What way?”