“They have the information you’re working from. Page for page. Explain how that happened. I thought I could trust you—”

“I’m sorry, are you accusing me of malfeasance after you blackmailed me into doing this for you? Really?”

“You screwed me.”

“Okay, first of all, if I were going to fuck you like that I would have gone to the Wall Street Journal, not the Charlemont Herald Post Ledger or whatever the hell it’s called. I can name half a dozen reporters in the Big Apple. I couldn’t tell you who to call down here in goddamn Kentucky. And more to the point, after this little nightmare is over, I’m going back to Manhattan. You think I couldn’t use a couple of favors owed to me? The shit about your family and your little bourbon business is big news, asshole. Bigger than some Podunk, USA Today wrapper of a daily. So yeah, if I were going to leak anything, I would want some upside for me personally.”

Lane breathed hard. “Jesus Christ.”

“I also wouldn’t call him. But that’s because I’m a Jew.”

Dropping his head, Lane rubbed his eyes. Then he walked around, going between the bed and the desk. The desk and one of the long-paned windows. The window and the bureau.

He ended up back at the windows. Night had yet to fall, but it was coming soon, the sunset scrumming down at the horizon, making the curve of the earth bleed pink and purple. In his peripheral vision, all of Jeff’s work, the notes, the computers, the printouts were like a scream in his ear.

And then there was the fact that his old college roommate was naked across the room, staring at him with a remote expression: Behind all that anger that had just jumped out of Jeff’s mouth, there was hurt, real hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Lane breathed. “I’m sorry … I jumped to the wrong conclusions.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m also sorry that I’m making you do this. I just … I’m losing my damn mind over here. I feel like I’m in a house that’s on fire, and every way out is nothing but flames. I’m burning and I’m desperate and I’m sick of this shit.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” his old friend muttered in his New Jersey accent. “See, there you go.”

Lane glanced over his shoulder. “What?”

“Being all nice. I hate that about you. You piss me off and drive me crazy, and then you get all honest and it becomes impossible for me to hate your sorry, white-privileged ass. FYI, I was enjoying being furious at you. It was the only exercise I was getting—well, Tiphanii notwithstanding.”

Lane smiled a little and then refocused on the view. “Honest, huh. You want honest? As in something I haven’t told anybody?”

“Yes. The better I know what’s happening here, the more I can help and the less I resent being trapped.”

Off in the distance, a hawk soared on invisible currents, riding the sky with sharp corners and fast straightaways, like the gloaming was full of highways and byways that only birds could see.

“I think my brother killed him,” Lane heard himself say. “I think Edward was the one who did it.”

Man, Jeff had so totally been enjoying the righteous pissed thing. It had been a smooth, but intense ride, the burn in his chest an inexhaustible gas tank that kept him awake throughout the night, focused on the numbers, moving through the data.

But he and Lane the Asshole had hit these corners before during the course of their long relationship, patches of miscommunication or stupidity jarring them apart. Somehow, that Southerner over there always closed the distance, though.

And yup, he’d done it again. Especially with that jarring little news flash of his.

“Shit,” Jeff said as he lay back against the pillows. “You serious?”

Dumbass question.

Because that was not the kind of thing anyone said, even in jest, given what was happening in this household. And it was also especially not something Lane would have even thought to himself about his hero older brother unless he had a really good reason.

“Why?” Jeff murmured. “Why would Edward do something like that?”

“He’s the one with the real motive. My father was a terrible man and he did a lot of terrible things to a lot of powerful people. But is Monteverdi going to kill him over that debt? No. He’s going to want to get his money back. And Rosalinda didn’t do it. She was dead before my father went over the falls. Gin has always hated him, but she wouldn’t want to get her hands dirty. My mother has always had reason, but never the capacity. Who else could have done it?”

“Your brother isn’t in good shape, though. I mean, I was getting something to eat and heading back up here when he came in the house. He was limping like his leg was broken. It didn’t seem like he could handle shutting the damn door, much less throwing someone off a bridge.”

“He could have had help.” Lane looked over his shoulder, and yeah, that handsome face looked like it had been through the washer—and not in a good way. “The people out at the farm are devoted to him. My brother has that way about him, and he knows how to get things done.”

“Has he been here? To the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“There are security cameras, right? Here on the estate.”

“Yeah, and he knows that. He put in the goddamn system, and if you erase things, it’s going to show. There are log-ins that can be traced.”

“Have the detectives asked for the footage?”

“Not yet. But they will.”

“Are you going to give it to them?”

Lane cursed. “Do I have a choice? And I don’t know … I was alone with Edward today. I almost asked him.”

“What stopped you? Were you afraid he’d get pissed?”

“Among other things, I was afraid of the answer.”

“What’s your next move?”

“I wait. The detectives aren’t going away. They’ll go out to see him at the farm. And if he did it …”

“You can’t save him.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Why exactly would your brother want your dad dead, though? Lot of trouble to go to just because you got grounded a couple of times as a kid.”

“Father tried to have him killed down in South America—”

“Excuse me?”