“I won’t! I’m going to that Gala. With you or without you.”

It was one of her favorite games, to dangle hints of all the other men who’d gladly take his place in her life. He had no patience for it tonight. He went into his dressing room and closed the door in her face. He locked it.

She let out an astonished shriek. He went through to his bathroom and closed that door, too, and sank down on the edge of the tub. He pressed a fist against his churning stomach as Lambert’s cold dead stare flashed again in his memory. There was something lethal in her pale eyes, and it chilled him all the way down to the cold hard porcelain beneath him.

The sound of breaking glass came from their bedroom. Melanie was throwing things.

A thought came to him, so sudden and unexpected it was like a streak of lightning split the sky. It was something that had never once crossed his mind, but now it seemed so obvious he couldn’t believe he’d never thought it before.

Maybe Lucy’s death wasn’t suicide.

Maybe he’d framed Lambert for a murder she actually did commit.

He saw her again in his memory. The black sheath dress as smooth and glossy as a shark’s skin. Her hair and its otherworldly glow. Her pale eyes glittering like shards of glass.

She wanted him dead. He knew that. And if she’d killed once, she could surely do it again.

He pulled out his phone. The number wasn’t in his contacts—saving it there would have suggested more of an ongoing relationship than he was willing to admit—but he scrolled through his call log until he found it. He stared at it for a long time while Melanie pounded on the dressing room door. What time was it in KL? Seven a.m.? Though why should he care? When you were about to embark on something like this, the niceties of civilized discourse hardly mattered. His finger hovered over the number.

“Barry, let me in! You bastard!” Melanie howled.

He pressed it.

“Hey, boss,” Tony Low answered. “You sent the package?”

Barrett cleared his throat. “Um, no. We’re having trouble getting delivery on this end. So we need a plan B.”

“Okay.”

“You have people over here, right?”

“Sure. Lots. What kinda people you need?”

Barrett searched for a euphemism, a way to extend the package metaphor. “Um, instead of a pickup, a takeout?” He winced as he said it. There was no way anyone could understand what he meant.

Low was silent for a long moment. “Sure, boss,” he said finally, with a snicker in his voice. “But that’s gonna cost more. A lot more.”

He understood.

Chapter 27

I used to think my life changed in an instant—the instant I lost my job at Jackson Rieders—but in hindsight I knew that wasn’t true. The seeds of the Great Recession were sown years before, and the firm had been missing its profit-per-partner benchmarks for some time. The ax that severed my life into Before and After had been swinging for a long time before it landed.