“Neither have you,” the man pointed out. “Unfortunately for them, events have placed them in our path just as events have placed you in mine. And through no fault of their own, their lives now hang in the balance. So to speak.”

“So?” Gibson said. “I don’t know them. Never met them. What the hell does who you kill have to do with me? That’s on you, not me.”

It was a bluff. He tried to make it a good one.

“True, true. It is ‘on me.’ Your conscience is clean. But it is not your conscience that should concern you.” The man shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be thinking about Ellie?”

At the mention of his daughter’s name, Gibson went rigid with fear. “What about her?”

“Well . . . how will it affect her? Your crime, I mean,” the man said. “Think how luridly it will play in the media. Imagine how you will be remembered. How Ellie will remember you. They will say that you lost your mind, but before you hung yourself, you murdered the Tompkinses—the unfortunate people who bought your father’s house. They will label you a degenerate psychopath who needed to inflict his misery on innocents. The deranged end to a family tragedy that began more than a decade ago. That will be the epitaph to your life. When Ellie is grown and thinks about her father, it will be with confusion and shame. The same way you’ve thought about your own father. So I ask you for Linda and Mark. And for your daughter. Did you make a copy?”

Gibson opened his mouth to speak but then shut it again. Tears streamed down his face. For his father. For his daughter. For the choice he had to make now.

But he knew he was through arguing or pleading with this man. From the first moment he had stared into this man’s empty eyes, Gibson had known on some level that there was no pity there and never had been. He’d be damned if he was going to waste the last minutes of his life begging. He would do something good with that time instead. He would save Linda and Mark. That would be worthwhile . . . even if her paintings were lousy.

“Did you make a copy?”

“I did not,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

The man considered that. “You did, though. That was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“So you did not make a copy?”

“No.”

“No copies?”

“None.”

It went on and on like this. The same question asked dozens of times in dozens of different ways. It was insane, but Gibson fought for the man to believe him. Expected at any moment that the stool would be kicked away again. Finally . . .

“I believe you,” the man said.