Page 68 of Filthy Liar

“I’m fine.”

“How can you be fine? He was your brother, and I…”

He takes my hand and looks at me, his expression fierce. “When I say I’m fine, I mean, I will be fine. I mean, I’m so fucking grateful that you survived. I mean, I’m gutted that I didn’t see it earlier. And I don’t know if I could have pulled the trigger, but I hope I could have. That’s what I mean. I’m fine. I’m far from good, but I could be so much worse.”

I nod.

“Finish your Jello.”

I’ve lost my appetite, though.

The next morning,my catheter comes out, and I’m allowed to shower all by myself. I come out of the bathroom dressed in real clothes, feeling like a million bucks.

And then the day gets even better. Deacon Webb appears at the door. “You have a visitor.”

The gasp I let out when Caroline walks in the door is almost embarrassing. Almost, but not at all. “I’m so happy to see you,” I whisper as she gently squeezes me. “I have something for you.”

She hands me a stuffed bear from the gift shop. “That was supposed to be my line.”

I laugh, which hurts, but it’s worth it. “I, uh, found your condoms. At the gym?”

“Oh. Those.” Her eyes go wide with meaning. “Okay.”

“I didn’t…use them. Open them.” She giggles and I hold my side. “No funnies. Whatever is inside, I haven’t seen it. They’re in my backpack over there.”

She gives me another wide-eyed look and digs them out. “Oh, look at what I found just sitting in plain sight.”

“I figured, a room being guarded by U.S. Marshals is pretty safe.”

Laughing, she nods, then joins me on the bed. “You could have looked.”

“I didn’t need to. We sorted it out.”

“Better than we had,” she confesses. “The files named Mack Evans as a person of interest, but nothing like what you figured out.”

“Speaking of that…” I take a deep breath. “Wilson has a giant cache of documents. He hasn’t looked at them. We, uh, didn’t exactly tell the FBI about them.”

Caroline’s head looks like it might actually explode. “Mel!”

“Yeah, I know. But that wasn’t my call, because I was in an ambulance, and the Horus Group…it’s not in their nature to be forthcoming with law enforcement.”

“Men.”

“I hear you. So I need a federal prosecutor I can trust to turn the bulk of the documents over to. Even redacted, I think they reveal too much about the girls who were abused. It would be better if investigators could quietly search those girls out and get their permission before the documents are released.”

“No more burning it all to the ground?”

“I’ll find a way to do that without using those images. It’s enough that we have them. They shouldn’t be made public.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I don’t know if it’s your jurisdiction…”

“We’ll find a way to make sure it is. There were certainly enough dead bodies in my jurisdiction.”

“I’m only responsible for one of them.”

“In self-defense,” she adds. “You’re responsible for one of them in self-defense.”

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