Diana’s expression became strange.
“They aren’t the twist.”
Sarah almost laughed.
“Then I’m running out of emotional capacity.”
Diana reached beneath the tapes.
There was a photograph.
A younger Dale Cutter stood beside Frank.
And beside them—
Hank.
Sarah stared.
Hank’s face went still.
“What is that?”
Diana handed it to her.
The three men were not merely standing together.
Hank and Cutter had their arms around each other.
Friends.
Brothers almost.
Sarah looked at him.
“You said you were undercover inside Cutter’s crew.”
Hank’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“I was.”
“When did you join?”
Silence.
“Hank.”
“Before Frank.”
Sarah’s stomach dropped.
“How long before?”
“Seven years.”
“You worked for Cutter.”
“Yes.”
Diana turned toward the window.
“You told me you were trying to bring him down.”
“I was by the end.”
“The end?”
Sarah whispered.
“You helped build it too.”
Hank said nothing.
That silence broke something.
“Pull over.”
“Sarah.”
“Pull over!”
He did.
The truck stopped beside an abandoned storefront.
Sarah opened the door.
Hank caught her wrist.
“Those men are looking for you.”
She ripped her arm free.
“So are you.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe Cutter wants the evidence. Maybe you want it too.”
His face hardened.
“No.”
“How do I know?”
“You don’t.”
The answer stopped her.
Hank turned toward her.
“You shouldn’t trust me because I’ve been protecting you. You shouldn’t trust me because Frank was my friend. You shouldn’t trust me because I say I changed.”
He pointed toward the envelope.
“Trust evidence.”
Sarah waited.
Hank said, “Inside Frank’s box is a ledger. My name is in it.”
Diana stared.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“For twenty-four years?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Enough that if those records ever surfaced, I knew I could go to prison.”
Sarah’s voice became quiet.
“And you protected the box anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Hank looked exhausted.
“Because Frank died believing truth had to cost the people who earned the cost.”
Sarah closed the door again.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she understood something she had not ten minutes earlier.
Hank was not protecting evidence that made him look heroic.
He had spent twenty-four years protecting evidence that could destroy him too.
That meant something.
Not everything.
But something.
“Waterfront Park,” Sarah said.
Hank frowned.
“We need more people.”
“Federal.”
“Not yet.”
Diana looked at him.
“Hank.”
“There are names in Frank’s files. Some may still matter.”
Sarah pulled out her phone.
“Who do you trust?”
Hank thought.
“One person.”
“Who?”
“Christine Marsh.”
“The federal prosecutor?”
“Yes.”
Diana stared.
“You know her?”
“I’ve been feeding her fragments for three years.”
Sarah laughed bitterly.
“Of course you have.”
Hank called.
Christine Marsh answered on the first ring.
Sarah heard only Hank’s side.
“We’re moving.”
Pause.
“Yes.”
Pause.
“He found Sarah.”
Pause.
“No. We have Diana too.”
Another pause.
Hank’s expression changed.
“What do you mean you already know?”
Sarah looked up.
Hank listened.
Then slowly turned toward Diana.
Christine said something else.
Hank whispered, “Diana.”
“What?”
He ended the call.
“Marsh says Cutter’s men didn’t find Sarah from the obituary.”
Diana went still.
“How does she know?”
“Because federal surveillance watched one of Cutter’s lieutenants receive Sarah’s diner schedule yesterday.”
Sarah felt sick.
“From who?”
Hank stared at Diana.
“Someone inside our circle.”
Diana shook her head.
“No.”
“What circle?” Sarah asked.
Hank started driving again.
“The people who’ve helped move you over the years.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“Who knew where I worked?”
Hank thought.
“Me. Your mother.”
“And?”
“One other person.”
Diana whispered, “Jimmy.”
Sarah frowned.
“My boss?”
Hank nodded.
“Jimmy Navarro’s known us twenty years.”
Sarah laughed.
“No.”
“Sarah.”
“No.”
Jimmy had hired her when she was nineteen.
He had covered shifts when Diana was sick.
He brought tamales every Christmas.
He gave Sarah cash when her car transmission broke.
“He wouldn’t.”
Diana looked broken.
“I thought that about Briggs.”
The sentence ended the argument.
They met Christine Marsh in a federal parking garage beneath a government office two miles from the river.
She was fifty-one, compact, gray streak in dark hair, eyes that assessed everyone before she spoke.
She hugged Hank.
That surprised Sarah.
Then she turned to Diana.
“You have the tapes.”
Diana stiffened.
“How do you know?”
“Frank told me about them.”
Everyone froze.
Sarah stared.
“My father told you?”
Christine looked at Hank.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
Diana whispered, “Frank died twenty-four years ago. You were what, twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes.”
Hank stepped closer.
“How?”
Christine reached into her coat.
Hank tensed.
She withdrew an old FBI badge.
Not current.
The photograph showed Christine at twenty-eight.
“My father was Special Agent Thomas Marsh.”
Diana covered her mouth.
Hank’s face changed.
“Tommy Marsh.”
“Yes.”
Sarah looked between them.
“Who is Thomas Marsh?”
Christine answered.
“The federal agent your father intended to give the evidence to.”
Hank whispered, “He died.”
“Yes.”