Chương 3
“You have about ten seconds,” I said.
Luca glanced at the agents surrounding his mother.
Then he looked back at me.
“I found out who was stealing from the company.”
“That doesn’t explain the coffin.”
“No.”
“Or the hospital.”
“No.”
“Or why a doctor told me you were dead.”
His jaw tightened.
Across the chapel, Wendy began shouting that she wanted her attorney.
Flynn was being led through the side doors.
Luca lowered his voice.
“Because the person stealing from the company wasn’t the person we were trying to catch.”
I stared at him.
He looked exhausted beneath the funeral makeup.
“And who were you trying to catch?”
His eyes moved toward his mother.
Then, unexpectedly, past her.
Toward the front row.
Toward the relatives who had stopped whispering.
Toward the executives who were quietly checking their phones.
Toward three people who had not yet been arrested.
When Luca looked back at me, there was fear in his face.
Not fear of Wendy.
Something worse.
“Everyone who believed I was dead enough to move what they’d been hiding.”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard him.
The chapel had become a chamber of overlapping noise, but Luca’s words seemed to create their own silence around us.
I followed his gaze toward the front row.
Graham Sterling, Luca’s uncle, sat motionless with his hands folded over the silver head of his cane.
Beside him, Celeste Rowe, Sterling Global’s chief legal officer, was staring at the floor.
At the far end of the pew, Victor Hale, the company’s longtime chief financial officer, had his phone pressed against his thigh beneath his folded coat.
Three people.
Three people Luca had just looked at without naming.
Victor noticed me watching him and slipped the phone into his pocket.
The movement was small.
Too small for anyone who had not spent years learning that guilty people often betrayed themselves through the things they tried hardest to make invisible.
I turned back to Luca.
“How many?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You faked your death without knowing who you were trying to catch?”
His eyes flickered toward the reporters.
“Not here.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“You chose a funeral chapel for this.”
“That wasn’t my first choice.”
“No, apparently your first choice was letting your wife identify your body.”
His face tightened.
The anger that had kept me upright suddenly found somewhere to go.
I wanted him alive more than I had ever wanted anything.
I also wanted to hurt him for making me believe he was not.
Those two truths stood comfortably beside each other.
An agent approached us.
She was in her forties, compact and sharp-eyed, with graying hair pulled into a low knot.
“Mr. Sterling, we need to move you.”
Luca nodded.
She looked at me.
“Mrs. Sterling, you too.”
“Why?”
“Because the building isn’t secure anymore.”
That changed the air inside my chest.
I looked toward the front doors.
Two uniformed officers had taken positions there.
Another was speaking urgently into a radio.
“This was supposed to be controlled,” Luca said.
The agent gave him a hard look.
“It was supposed to be smaller.”
I folded my arms.
“I’m starting to notice a theme.”
Luca almost smiled, then thought better of it.
Behind us, Wendy’s voice rose.
“I have done nothing except protect my family.”
The lead investigator was reading her something from a card.
Rights.
Warnings.
The familiar procedural language sounded bizarre beneath the chapel’s organ pipes.
Wendy turned her head toward me as she was led down the aisle.
“Jessi.”
I did not move.
Her expression had changed again.
The fury remained, but something else had entered it.
Urgency.
“Do not trust him.”
Luca went still.
The agent beside us stepped forward.
“Mrs. Sterling, keep moving.”
Wendy resisted just enough to make the officer tighten his grip.
“I mean it,” she said to me.
Then she was gone through the doors.
The relatives watched her leave with the stunned fascination of people who had arrived expecting a funeral and received something much more useful for future conversation.
Luca touched my elbow.
I pulled away.
“Don’t.”
“We need to go.”
“I heard her.”
“She’s trying to split us.”
“You’ve done a pretty competent job of that yourself.”
His mouth closed.
Good.
There were moments in a marriage when silence was the closest available thing to wisdom.
We were led through a narrow hallway behind the altar.
The scent changed from lilies and furniture polish to old carpet and burnt coffee.
A young officer held open a door marked CLERGY ONLY.
Inside, Father Daniel’s office contained two armchairs, a cluttered desk, and a framed photograph of the priest holding a fish that looked too small to justify framing.
I stared at the photograph for several seconds because the alternative was looking at my living husband.
Luca lowered himself into one of the chairs.
He moved carefully.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing serious.”
“That is not an answer.”
“The drug they used leaves you weak for a while.”
I turned.
“The drug.”
He rubbed both hands over his face, smearing funeral makeup across one cheek.
“There was a medical team monitoring me.”
“At the funeral?”
“Nearby.”
I stared at him.
“You were chemically sedated inside a coffin.”
“Lightly.”
“Luca.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you?”
The agent closed the door.
“My name is Special Agent Mara Keene.”
I looked at her.
“Federal?”
“Financial Crimes Task Force.”
“That’s not an agency.”
“No.”
At least she did not insult me by pretending otherwise.
“It’s a joint operation,” she continued.
“FBI financial crimes personnel, IRS criminal investigators, and state partners.”
I glanced at Luca.
“You brought the federal government to your funeral.”
He leaned back and shut his eyes.
“When you say it like that, it sounds excessive.”
“It was excessive before I said it.”
Mara hid what might have been a smile.
Then her face settled.
“Mrs. Sterling, your husband was placed into protective custody thirty-six hours ago.”
“Forty-six.”
She paused.
May you like
“What?”
“I believed he was dead for forty-six hours.”
