She stares at me as if I had just appeared out of thin air.

“Of course. Nicholas Crawford is one of the biggest cases of the year, he can’t let it slip away. His opponents and enemies will never let him forget it.”

I shake my head, feeling disgusted and sick to my stomach.

“Besides, the FBI and the police know that Nicholas did commit other crimes, they just can’t necessarily prove those.”

I take a deep breath. This is difficult to argue with so I just let it go without either confirming or denying it.

“Do you know who the DNA might belong to?” I ask.

She shakes her head. She lays out everything she knows and I realize that I hold the pieces to the puzzle.

When I open my mouth, I hesitate.

Should I trust her, I wonder?

Do I tell her what I know?

My mind runs through the main eventualities.

Say I tell her and she actually is a spy for her boss, what then? Nothing.

Keenan will just get further confirmation of what I had already told him I knew. And if she thinks that Nicholas is innocent? Well, then I have even less to lose.

“I have to tell you something,” I say. “I’ve talked to two people about this and, it’s complicated, but once you hear me out, you will be even more convinced that Nicholas had nothing to do with what they’re accusing him of.”

Meredith listens carefully, containing her excitement as I launch from one story to another. At the end, she is practically jumping up and down and wrapping her arms around me.

“This is huge. Huge,” she says over and over again.

“There’s one other thing,” I say at the end. “I think I know who did it.”

She stares at me.

I take a deep breath. This is it.

If I tell her then there’s no going back. Not that I want to, but a lingering feeling somewhere in the back of my mind remains. He was the person I thought of as my brother and someone who I thought would be in my life forever.

“Owen Kernes,” I finally say. Meredith narrows her eyes. “He’s my brother.”

To my surprise, a big smile comes over her face.

“That’s kind of who I thought it might be,” she admits.

“Really?”

“A few of the podcast hosts mentioned him as a possible suspect. He did time in prison. He was in the neighborhood. And most importantly, he was Nina’s ex-boyfriend.”

I shrug, still finding it hard to believe that this can be true.

“The way he spoke about Nina, I always thought that he was in love with her. He was so angry at Nicholas. When he first told me that he thought that Nicholas killed her, I almost believed him. He was so certain.”

“I’m so sorry,” Meredith says, putting her hand on mine.