“So that we’re clear, I’ve never faked a story or made up a source. Every piece I’ve written was fact-checked for accuracy. I don’t follow or support wild conspiracy theories.” His whisper grew raspier, more insistent, as he talked. “What’s happening to me now, to my reputation, it’s part of a disinformation campaign about me and my beliefs.”

She wondered if this was what she sounded like when she rambled. “You’re blowing your one shot.”

He grabbed a notebook and held it in front of him. “Several very well-connected, influential people in the metro area, so far only men, have died under questionable circumstances. In all those cases, negative information leaked either before or right after the deaths. Anyone who questioned the manner of death had some part of their lives blow up.”

“That sounds like you’re guessing.” Rambling, actually, but she didn’t want to upset him. Not when she sat this close and didn’t know what he would do.

“If it only happened once, maybe,” he said. “Look at the most recent case. Alex Carlisle. Do you really think he shot himself in the dick then bled out?”

That case seemed to have a new twist every day. But he was connecting dots that didn’t exist. Using generalities and possibilities to invent a case for nothing. “I agree his death sounds—”

“Ridiculous and planned to look that way. Like he was being made to answer in the most obvious way for messing with women he’d paid to have sex with him. Hell, he should have been punished, but by a jury. Not a vigilante group.”

She thought about Alex Carlisle and the very strange way he’d died. His wife insisted he didn’t own a gun, and now this morning’s news talked about her being brought in for questioning, the implication being that the wife had believed the allegations against him and killed him. Almost as if she’d balked at the official story and now she was in trouble.

Damn, now Rob had her connecting phantom dots.

He sat back in his chair. “Look, I get that this sounds impossible. But it’s real, and following this, unraveling the puzzle, is personal.”

“How?” She wanted to write him off. Get up, walk away . . . but so little of her life made sense right now. Someone had sent that letter to Kennedy. The longer Gabby sat here, the less convinced she was that Rob had done it. Then who?

“I didn’t figure this conspiracy out on my own. Like you, I had to be convinced, and I fought it. Thought it sounded too twisted, too fantastical, to be real,” he said.

“Okay. Let me talk to this other person who convinced you.”

“She’s dead.”