“I told you what you needed to hear.”
The sentence changed her face.
For the first time, I saw that Vanessa had not been his partner in the way she imagined. She had been another person he studied, another wound he pressed until it opened.
Her eyes moved to the gun in his hand.
Then to the portable drive.
“You recorded me too,” she whispered.
Adrian gave a small shrug. “Insurance.”
Sirens rose outside. Officers were closing in.
Adrian backed toward the stairwell door. “You both should have understood something. People only see what they want to see. Daniel wanted a new family. Claire wanted to save everyone. Vanessa wanted to be chosen.”
Vanessa took one step toward him.
“Give me the drive.”
“No.”
“Give it to me.”
He laughed.
The gun swung toward her.
Everything happened at once.
Vanessa lunged for the drive.
Adrian fired.
The gunshot tore through the corridor. Vanessa screamed and fell against the wall, clutching her shoulder. The drive skidded across the tiles toward me.
Adrian turned the gun back toward my chest.
But the shot had brought officers through both ends of the hall.
“Drop the weapon!” Detective Ramirez shouted.
Adrian spun toward the stairwell.
His foot caught in the cable running across the floor. The gun went off again, blasting a screen into sparks. For one violent second he fought for balance, arms windmilling, face stripped of all control.
Then the rotten railing behind him broke.
He fell backward through it.
The crash from the stairwell below was final.
No one spoke.
Smoke curled from the ruined monitor. Claire’s frozen image flickered, then vanished.
Detective Ramirez moved first. She kicked the gun away. Officers rushed to Vanessa, who was sobbing on the floor, her blood darkening the sleeve of her coat. Two others ran down the stairs.
I stood where I was, unable to move.
The portable drive rested against the toe of my shoe.
Detective Ramirez looked up from the stairwell several moments later. Her face told me everything before she spoke.
“Adrian Vale is dead.”
Vanessa gave one long, empty laugh.
Then she began to cry so hard her whole body shook.
She survived the gunshot.
That was not mercy, exactly. It was consequence.
The evidence recovered from St. Agnes was overwhelming. The drive contained recordings, financial records, aliases, messages, and files tied to homes across three states. Vanessa’s fingerprints were on the old equipment in my house, on Claire’s phone, and on the original camera casing from Emma’s room. The video inside Bunny showed she had helped Adrian lure Claire to St. Agnes and had urged him to take the phone that would have proved what they were doing.
She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, child endangerment, unlawful surveillance, obstruction of justice, and a list of crimes so long I stopped reading it after a while.
