Fool Me Once(99)

“It’s too late for deals, Judith,” Maya said.

“She’s right, Mom.”

It was Neil. Maya turned to him and saw that he was pointing a gun in her direction. “But I have a better idea,” he said to Maya. “You stole Hector’s truck. You broke into our house. You are, I’m sure, armed. You admitted killing Joe and now you are going to kill us. Only, I shoot you in time and save us. We still pin the EAC scandal on Joe, but now we don’t spend our lives looking over our shoulders.”

Neil glanced at his mother. Judith smiled. Then Caroline nodded. The whole family had come together.

Neil fired the gun three times.

Poetic, Maya thought. That was how many times she’d shot Joe.

Maya collapsed to the ground, arms and legs spread. She was on her back. She couldn’t move. She expected to feel cold, but that wasn’t the case. The voices came to her in quick snatches: “No one will ever know . . .”

“Check her pockets . . .”

“She doesn’t have a gun . . .”

Maya smiled and looked toward the fireplace.

“What’s she smiling about . . . ?”

“What’s that above the fireplace? It looks like . . .”

“Oh no . . .”

Maya’s eyes blinked and then closed. She waited for the sounds—the copters, the gunfire, the screaming—to begin their assault. But they didn’t come. Not this time. Not ever again.

There was darkness and silence and then, finally, peace.





Chapter 34


TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER

The elevator doors are about to close when I hear a woman call out my name.

“Shane?”

I stick my hand out to hold the elevator. “Hello, Eileen.”

She rushes in, smiling, and kisses me on the cheek. “Been a long time.”

“Too long.”

“You look good, Shane.”

“So do you, Eileen.”

“I heard you had a knee replacement. Are you okay?”

I wave off her concern. We both smile.

It’s a good day.

“How are your kids?” I ask.

“Great. Did I tell you Missy is teaching at Vassar?”

“She was always a smart one. Like her mother.”

Eileen puts her hand on my arm and leaves it there. We are both still single, though we’d had our moment way back when. Enough said there. We ride the rest of the way in silence.

By now you’ve all seen the video from that nanny cam Maya put above the Farnwood fireplace—they used to call it “going viral” when something got that big—so I’ll tell you the rest of what I know.

That night, after Maya convinced me to keep an eye on Hector and Isabella, she called someone who worked with Corey the Whistle. I never learned the person’s name. No one did. They set up a live feed using the nanny cam. In short, the world was able to watch everything that went on in the Burkett house that night. They watched it live. Corey the Whistle was a pretty big deal already—this was in the days when that kind of transparency was in its infancy—but after that night, his site became one of the biggest on the web. I obviously had a personal beef against it for putting our mission up. But in the end, Corey Rudzinski used the publicity Maya got him that night to do a lot of good. Scared, wounded, powerless people who’d been afraid to tell the truth suddenly had the courage to come forward. Corrupt governments and businesses toppled.

So in the end, that had been Maya’s idea: expose the truth for the world to see in live time. It was just that nobody expected that ending.

A murder right before your eyes.

The elevator doors open.

“After you,” I say to Eileen.

“Thank you, Shane.”

As I follow her down the corridor, still limping with the new knee, I can feel my heart swelling in my chest. I admit that as I get older, I get more emotional. I’m more prone to cry at life’s good moments.

When I turn the corner and enter the hospital room, the first person I see is Daniel Walker. He’s thirty-nine years old now and stands six four. He works three floors up as a radiologist. Next to him is his sister, Alexa. She’s thirty-seven with a little one of her own. Alexa does digital design, though I don’t really know exactly what that is.

They both greet me with hugs and kisses.

Eddie is there too, and his wife, Selina. Eddie was widowed nearly ten years before he remarried. Selina is a wonderful woman, and I’m happy that Eddie found happiness after Claire. Eddie and I shake hands and do that guy thing where we half hug.

Then I look at the bed where Lily is holding her new baby girl.

Ka-pow. My heart explodes in my chest.

I don’t know if Maya went to the Burketts that night knowing that she was going to die. She left her gun in the car. Some theorize she did that so the Burketts wouldn’t be able to claim self-defense. Maybe. Maya left me a letter that she wrote the night before her death. She left Eddie one too. She wanted Eddie to raise Lily if anything happened to her. Eddie did that in spectacular fashion. She wrote that she hoped Daniel and Alexa would be good older siblings to her daughter. They were that and then some. I was to be Lily’s godfather, Eileen the godmother. Maya wanted us to stay in her life. Eileen and I did that, but with Eddie, Daniel, Alexa, and then Selina, I don’t think Lily needed us.