“Your friend Kate is finishing with McDonald now. You need to go.” He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and set it atop the photo. “My attorney’s contact information. The location of the FBI video file I need is written on the back. You should be able to access it on Agent Stavros’s hard drive.”
She didn’t bother asking how he knew Nick’s name.
“Forward the video to my attorney. He’ll take care of the rest.”
Teddy heard chairs scraping from the room next door. She rose and headed toward the door. She didn’t want Yates to think she’d give in too easily, though in her heart, she knew that she’d do anything for more information about her birth parents.
“Ask Corey where his Bruins hat is,” Yates said.
She didn’t question him. Right now she’d do anything he asked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“I MADE IT CLEAR FROM the start that you’d each have thirty minutes to talk to him.” Nick said.
“This isn’t just a dumb competition,” Teddy said. “I need five minutes.” Well, she hoped she’d be able to do it in that amount of time. She wasn’t sure how long it would take. She just knew she needed to convince Nick to let her back into that room.
“Let her talk to him,” said Kate. She had circles under her eyes, and her skin was pale. She looked like all the fight had been sucked out of her.
“What did you say, Atkins?” Nick asked.
“Teddy’s right,” Kate said. “What if I said that I had a flash of claircognizance when I was in there and I saw that Teddy going back in was the key to closing this case?”
“Did you?”
Kate shrugged. “Only one way to know.” When Nick turned toward a guard stationed by the door, Kate winked at Teddy.
Nick pulled Teddy aside. He lifted his right hand as if he wanted to pat her arm, then stopped. He cleared his throat. “Same strategy you had before. He shared more with you than Atkins.” Teddy nodded.
Corey was still sitting at the table when she and Nick walked in. He looked up, surprised. “I thought we were finished.”
“I just had another question to ask, if that’s okay?” Teddy said, trying to make her voice syrupy-sweet.
“Yeah, sure.” He smiled at her.
She summoned up his Facebook profile picture in her mind’s eye, remembering the Bruins hat low on his head. “So, you know how I said I can help find that memory for you?”
She closed her eyes and reached out to Corey’s mind, sinking into the inky darkness. She saw the white Victorian house again, the details sharper than before: now she noticed that the paint was scuffed on the wooden siding; the floorboards were broken on the porch; the windows were dusty.
“Yeah,” Corey said.
“I need you to try really hard. You had a few beers, right?”
“Yeah,” Corey said.
In her mind’s eye, Teddy walked closer to the house, up the creaky stairs. She knew who Corey was now, a mystery no longer. Before she even placed her hand on the handle, it swung open.
“She made such a big deal over a few beers.”
Inside the house, Teddy turned and saw an old-fashioned linoleum kitchen, a small living room with a lumpy denim couch and a large TV. “A few beers. That’s nothing. I get it, Corey.”
Teddy walked toward the TV and turned it on. She flipped through the channels, through memories: Corey fishing with his father, looking through a copy of Romeo and Juliet in a classroom. Finally, she saw Marlena, and she watched as the night played out differently than he described it. Corey was yelling.
“Did you try to explain that to her?”
Corey raised his hands, cuffs catching against the table. “I don’t remember.”
Teddy watched the TV screen: Corey grabbed Marlena by the wrist. She pulled away. Then his hands were around her neck.
“Maybe she wasn’t a very good listener,” Teddy said.
Corey didn’t say anything more.
In her mind’s eye, Teddy walked closer to the TV. Marlena clawed at the air, Corey’s truck, Corey. She couldn’t breathe. Just like Jillian in the library.
“Then what happened?” Teddy said.
“I don’t remember.”
And suddenly, she was there, living the moment as Corey was. She felt the humid air on her skin. The warm night surrounded her. Marlena was on the ground now. Then he was hauling her into his truck. Driving her to the wetlands. Dumping her into the water. Teddy looked to her left, saw the Bruins hat fall off of Corey’s head and into a bank of tall spike rush by the water.
Teddy shook her head, breaking the connection. She was in one place now. Looking into the eyes of a murderer.
“So why the Bruins? They’re UCLA’s team, not yours.” Teddy knew all the California sports teams like the back of her hand. Not that the gambling knowledge had served her until now. “You were wearing the hat that night, right? We have the picture from Facebook.”
Corey swallowed. “I like the team. That’s not a crime.”
“It is a crime if we find the hat in the wetlands, Corey. Which we will.” Teddy pushed her chair back, legs scraping against the floor. She stood up to leave.
He sprang forward, jerking the chains with him over the table. “I didn’t—it was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill her.”
The room went silent. All three of them realizing what he’d just admitted.
“No, I didn’t mean to say that. I didn’t.” Corey looked from Teddy to Nick. “Hey, you guys told me that you were here to help. My dad hired you. My lawyer would’ve been here otherwise. This isn’t . . . This shouldn’t count.”
She didn’t need to see how the rest of it played out. Her heart was breaking—both for Marlena and for the Corey whom she’d thought she knew. The boy she’d thought was innocent, stuck in San Quentin, until she’d actually met him and looked into his soul.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
TEDDY SAT SILENTLY IN THE front seat of
