The Match (Wilde, #2)(62)

And then Marnie said it: “If you know, why do you need me?”

There it was. The admission. A person telling the truth has no need to say this or worry. She hadn’t been totally honest on that podcast. Wilde was sure of it now.

“Because I need confirmation. Just for myself. Dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I don’t do any of this lightly. I know you didn’t tell the truth on the podcast. I have the proof. It’s enough to ruin you.”

“Stop saying that!”

Marnie had a point. Wilde was winging this now and not doing a great job of it. It also dawned on him that those Hartford cops had done something similar to him in terms of trying to bluff. He felt bad about that, using their techniques, but not bad enough to stop.

“And I did the right thing,” Marnie said. “If you know everything, you know that.”

The right thing? Oh boy. He had to tread lightly here.

“No, Marnie, I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. From where I stand, you are guilty and I’m going to take you down for it.” Wilde cut off her denials with a raised hand. “Now if there is another side that I’m not seeing, if there is something I’m missing, you need to come clean fast, Marnie. Because right now, without further explanation, I don’t see how you can claim you did ‘the right thing.’”

Marnie’s green eyes darted everywhere as she considered her options. This, Wilde knew, was where he had to play it delicately. Push her too hard and she might just run. Stop peppering her with threats and she may gain enough composure to realize that his whole line of questioning was a load of bullshit.

“Never mind,” Wilde said.

“What?”

Wilde shrugged. “I don’t like any of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m releasing the info to the Reality Ralph podcast.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’re not worth saving, Marnie. You deserve to be canceled.”

The tears started flowing again. “Why are you being so mean?”

Again with that. “You know why.”

“I was only trying to help!”

“Help who?”

Marnie sobbed some more.

“Look, I gave you a chance to save yourself, Marnie. I shouldn’t have. But because my sister and I are genuine fans”—shovel, shovel—“I did. My boss, he said you weren’t worth it. I’m thinking he was right.”

Wilde took the risk now of turning away from her. She cried harder.

A woman’s voice said, “Honey, are you okay? Is that man harming you?”

Shit, Wilde thought.

Wilde spun back around. The woman was small, wizened, wheeling a shopping cart and staring daggers at Wilde.

“Hon, do you want to come with me? We can go someplace safe.”

Wilde decided to push his luck a bit. “No worries. We were finished talking anyway.”

“What?” Marnie turned to the wizened woman and offered her a big yet sad smile. “No, no, I’m fine. Really. This man is a dear friend.”

The wizened woman wasn’t buying it. “Dear friend, huh?”

“Yes. His sister Jane and I were college roommates. He just…I’m crying because he just gave me bad news about Jane’s cancer. It’s stage four.”

An Oscar-worthy performance, just like that. The wizened woman looked at Wilde, then back to Marnie. A second later, this being New York City, the wizened woman shrugged and moved on.

“Enough,” Wilde said when they were alone again. “Tell me.”

“You’ll keep your promise?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t get out?”

“Promise.”

“I won’t get canceled?”

Wilde had no idea what the fallout would be. “Promise.”

Marnie took a deep breath and blinked back more tears. “He did it to someone else, not me. Peter, I mean.”

“He did what to someone—?”

“Stop it,” she snapped. “You know what I’m talking about. Peter harassed this girl. He sent her nudes and when the opportunity came, he roofied her and…” Her voice just faded away.

“What girl?”

“This is what I was told.”

“Told by whom?”

“By the girl herself, for one. She didn’t want to come forward. That was part of the arrangement we made. If she came forward herself with those accusations, her life would be changed forever. Millions of people would hear it—and she couldn’t handle that kind of attention. She isn’t a celebrity. They needed someone to tell her story for her.”

Wilde saw it now. “You.”

“Her story was so awful. Awful. What Peter—my own brother-in-law—did to her. I cried so hard. He had to be punished. We could all see that right away. This girl, she thought about going to the police, but she didn’t want that either. So we came up with an idea.”

“You’d go on the podcast,” Wilde said, “and say it happened to you.”

My God, Wilde thought. It was just awful enough to make sense.

“I wanted to help this girl—and I wanted my sister to know what kind of man she’d married.”