“Lillian?” Someone was calling my name and I straightened, realizing I was leaning against the stop sign.

  It was Sam, my knight in a shiny black SUV, his window down, looking at me as if I had two heads. “Are you lost?” He chuckled and waved at me. “Come on. Get in.”

  I looked left, right, left, making sure that no cars were in sight, then carefully made my way over to the passenger door and climbed in. Dropping my bag by my feet, I turned to him. “Hi. Nice car.”

  “Hi. Thank you.” He grinned at me from beneath a blue baseball cap. “You look drunk.”

  “I’m fairly drunk,” I admitted. “I may have dipped into the liquor cabinet after you left.”

  “Well, here.” He lifted a Starbucks cup out of the cup holder.

  “Oh, I love you forever.” I cupped the pumpkin spice latte reverently with both hands. “Were you bringing this to me?”

  He smiled at me. “You seemed down this morning. I wanted to check back in with you, figured you could use the caffeine.”

  “Bless you, child.” I took a deep sip, then another. I closed my eyes and set my head back on the rest. “I’ve got this meeting with the attorney at two.”

  “You got plenty of time. Don’t worry.” He took a right on the street before our block.

  “Wait, take me home.” I pointed limply toward the direction of our house.

  “I will. I just need to check on a listing real quick. Just relax. You need to sober up a little before Mike sees you anyways.” He tapped the screen and pressed an icon, and my seat reclined.

  I groaned in appreciation and took another sip of my latte. “You should have gotten the venti.”

  He chuckled and made a slow turn down a residential street. “Greedy girl. Most people would just say thank you.”

  “Thank you. Next time get the venti.” I took another long pull and then shook the cup, indicating how empty it almost was. I reached over and squeezed his arm. “I’m just kidding.”

  “Sort of,” he countered.

  “Sort of,” I agreed.

  “I solemnly swear to never buy you another minuscule-size pumpkin latte.” He placed his hand on his heart to underline the vow.

  “Thank you.” Leaving my hand on his arm, I noticed the white gloves he was wearing. “What’s with the gloves?”

  “They’re moisture gloves.” He nodded toward my knees. “Want to try them? There’s an extra pair in a bag by your feet.”

  I waved off the offer, the glove box too far away for me to reach from my reclined position. “This car is nice.” I looked in the back seat. “Is it new?”

  “Loaner from the dealership.”

  “Cool. Oh, Sam?” I yawned.

  “Yeah?”

  I had a question to ask him, or maybe it was a comment, but the interior of the vehicle was starting to spin and I had to close my eyes to stop the motion. Beneath me, the seat whirred and reclined farther, till I was almost flat, and he was so sweet and thoughtful. That was my last thought, before I fell asleep. How sweet Sam was.

  I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like without him.

  CHAPTER 70

  SAM

  How do you justify murder? I had two reasons: jealousy and revenge.

  Screw her for not appreciating him, or me, or respecting and understanding what was right underneath her nose. Screw him for tossing me aside every time she snapped her fingers, or paid him the slightest bit of attention, or screwed up in some new and unimaginative way.

  I had a few options. I could have walked away from him and her, licked my wounds, built my life without them and the nonstop blender they put my heart in, but the problem was the money. Mike’s business kept me fat—money always needed to be washed, and real estate flips were one of the best ways to do it. Last year, he accounted for more than 70 percent of my business and referred me more big-ticket clients than I gained through any other source. Ignoring the heartbreak, I literally couldn’t afford to lose him, which was why I ditched that option for an easier one—getting rid of her.

  Poor Lillian made it easy on me. Put a drink in her hands and she’d guzzle it. Swap a pill in her medicine bottle and she’d pop it. A year ago, for two months straight, I replaced all her bipolar medication with an estrogen blocker to see how she reacted. I tested GHB in her drinks at Perch, and she blacked out for a solid six hours. I could have cherry-picked a variety of options to take when she was in my car, that pumpkin latte clutched in her spindly little hands, but I had a plan, of course. As Benjamin Franklin once said, by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail, and killing someone wasn’t something I could afford to fail at. Imprisonment, along with poverty and emotional abandonment, would not be in my future, and I spent hundreds of hours envisioning the perfect way to end Lillian Smith’s life.

  That’s why this was the perfect murder, and it’s why I will never be caught. Tomorrow belongs to the people who plan for it today, and I planned for this day for years.

  But before I walk into the brilliance of how and why I killed Lillian, I do want to clarify that I didn’t set out to sleep with her husband, or to fall in love with him. Five years ago, I met a cute and quirky writer in a meditation class, and that was where our friendship began.

  I didn’t know or care that she had a husband. I liked her. She made me laugh. She was fragile and found me entertaining, and I was in between relationships and bored and warmed to the idea of a more intellectual friend, one who actually knew who Eckhart Tolle was and could debate modern philosophy and theories of life and death and the battles and journeys of each.

  I didn’t just like Lillian; I grew to love her. I took her son to bike meets and taught him how to play chess and set him up with my housekeeper’s daughter—a beautiful girl he should have banged but didn’t. And I talked business with her husband and lured him into the real estate market with a few inside deals that no one else could have gotten done. I drank beers while he grilled steaks and played the “man’s game” because I’m good at that. I can butch up better than a straight guy, and when Lillian began to struggle . . . that was when things turned. She was going through emotional dips and peaks, and Mike and I played babysitter, taking turns watching and helping her, which put us in almost constant communication. In the late nights, when she fell asleep on the couch, we would sometimes stay up drinking, and sometimes I would stay over, because I was drunk and it was late, and everything was still innocent but there was a vibe.

  God, that vibe. It was electric and reminded me of my very first boyfriend, back when I was straight as an arrow—a preacher’s son, for shit’s sake—and already had a girlfriend, one who wore proper things, and sang in the choir, and didn’t ever push me for anything, anything more than a kiss. A girlfriend with an older brother, John. When our eyes met, my breath would hitch in my chest and my heart would race. He made the first move, and when he kissed me, I felt like it was the single most exciting and significant moment in my life.

  I felt that same forbidden electricity with Mike, and maybe it was caused by Lillian, or by the fact that he tried so hard to avoid it, so hard to stay in the straight lane that he had committed to already. Whatever the reason, just a single brush of our hands felt miraculous, the air between us so charged with energy that I didn’t know how she didn’t feel it, how it wasn’t glaring and obvious to anyone who passed within a mile.

  And that vibe only heightened when the market turned and—for the first time—one of Mike’s client’s real estate deals went south. That was when he brought me into the fold, when we did some slightly illegal maneuvering and his trust in me grew, our bond tightened, my profit share increased, and Mike Smith turned into a verifiable badass, right before my eyes.

  Intelligence is hot. Intelligence, money, and power are sexy as hell—and Lillian had no idea what her husband was packing.

  So yeah, I fell for him. But he also fell for me. He could tell her that it was just sex, but that was a lie. He loves me. We are in love. He had to put us on hold to satisfy Lillian’s temper tantrum, but she showed her true colors quickly with the affair, and I assumed he would run back to me once that happened.

  I assumed. That was my first mistake, and one that Mike himself always hammers into me, which only made it taste more rotten when Lillian told me that he was standing beside her, that they were fighting this together and would make it through the embarrassment and reality of the video—the video that my private investigator had filmed, the video that I myself had edited and posted for maximum damage, both to Lillian and Mike’s relationship, and also to her and Jacob’s.

  It should have been an easy nail in their marriage’s coffin—proof that their relationship was flawed past the point of repair. It should have been an easy and quick decision for Mike, but he failed in that decision, just like he had failed in how he handled Lillian finding out about his “affair.”

  So I had to kill her. I had to make the decision for him. It wasn’t easy, but it helped that she had been so selfish, of late. It helped me to look at our friendship and realize how one-sided it was. Just like her marriage to Mike, my friendship with her was all about helping Lillian. Supporting Lillian. Picking up her pieces as she fell apart and putting her back together.

  Killing her was the end of a long road, with plenty of places for her to veer off and into safety, had she just been less selfish and more considerate of others.

  And now, even in death, she’s being a pain. Luis wants me in Lynwood, so I’m canceling a showing and driving over to do a puppet dance for him and his thugs. I’m certain this is about Colorado, and I have all the figures with me, but pulling out of our pending deals, as I told Mike, is a mistake. Not my mistake, thank God, but no one would be freaking out if Lillian were alive and the cops weren’t sniffing around Mike.

  Maybe it was a mistake to make the fake calls from Lillian’s phone. At the time, I’d considered it to be brilliant. No one would be looking at me, the dearest friend, not when there were two fantastic candidates for her murder—David and Mike. And if Lillian had killed herself, she would certainly have called and ordered her own obituary. It’s the exact kind of off-the-wall action she was known for.

  I originally moved to Los Angeles to become an actor, so mimicking Lillian’s quiet rasp was a breeze, especially given that I mocked her sayings regularly to Mike. The phone-call recipients had certainly bought it. The concern in the voice of the domestic-abuse center’s operator—Do we need to get you someplace safe?—had been a testament to my vocal skills, and I had driven an erratic trek through the city, dropped her cell in the back of a courier truck, then spent the drive back to Malibu patting myself on the back for my creativity while Lillian’s body rolled around on the back seat.

  Now I’ve followed Luis’s men through a shitty ranch-style home, and we are walking down a set of unfinished stairs into a basement. There is a group waiting for us, and I duck my head to avoid hitting the ceiling and squint as my eyes adjust to the dim light.

  Jacob’s is the first face I recognize, and my stomach sinks at what it means if he is here. Luis turns in his chair to face me, and just past him, seated at a folding table beside Jacob, his head in his hands, is Mike.

  Okay. So it’s this sort of meeting.

  CHAPTER 71

  SAM

  This basement is filthy. In prior meetings with Mike’s clients, we met at steak houses and expensive hotel suites and, once, on a G5. This is the sort of exchange I’d prefer to stay out of, though the danger factor of the cartel business has always given me a sort of bad-boy factor that I have enjoyed, a secret hidden layer of my life that added dimension.

  Now, seeing the looks on Mike’s and Jacob’s faces, I realize that I might be in over my head. My first thought is that this is about what I did to Lillian, but the cartel doesn’t seem to care about personal squabbles, as long as they don’t affect business, and I made sure that I always kept my affair with Mike and my friendship with Lillian clear of work.

  My mistake—the voice mail to the domestic-abuse center, which undoubtably put some attention on Mike—pokes at me, but again, how would they pin that on me?

  I meet Mike’s eyes, and they are afraid and apologetic, and maybe I shouldn’t be the one worried about my mistakes. I take in the scene. There’s a stiff tension in the air, and a half dozen cartel members stand around as if ready for war. Luis is their stark counterpoint in his clean and pressed attire.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.” I smile warmly, and my father’s belief that my acting classes were all a waste is proven wrong, once again. The greeting comes out smoothly and confidently, and when Luis looks at me, I can tell that he is gauging and confirming my innocence in this—whatever this is—from my poise and calm demeanor. “What’s all this about?”

  “We’re trying to move Colorado,” Luis says, and tilts his head to Mike. “Mike says he’s lost the private key to the Bitcoin account.”

  “W-w-what?” I gawk despite my best efforts. “What do you mean, ‘lost’?”

  “I hid it with a bottle of liquor in our safe,” Mike says dully. “Lillian apparently took it out on the morning she died.”

  A bottle of liquor. Lillian apparently took it out. The puzzle pieces click into place, and I think of the box of liquor that was with Lillian when I picked her up. I found it when I was cleaning out the SUV I had borrowed for the task, and recognized it as their anniversary token. I took it home as a perverse F-you to Lillian and toasted the end of their marriage on my back deck, overlooking the ocean. The bottle and box are in my trash compactor, safe and sound until the maid arrives in the morning. My heart beats faster at the realization of what I have. The key to the Bitcoin balance of Colorado, which has to be close to half a billion dollars. I look from Mike’s stricken face to Jacob, who looks as if he is about to have an anxiety attack, to Luis, who has a few beads of sweat along his hairline. For a man who prides himself on staying cool under pressure, that is tantamount to a mental breakdown.

  I’m the only one who knows where it is. The power behind this knowledge is staggering, and I slide my hands into the pockets of my shorts so that I can ball them into fists without anyone seeing.

  “So.” I clear my throat. “Why am I here?”

  “Well, you’re here for motivation.” Luis smiles. “We’re hoping to jog Mike’s memory—plus you know Lillian. Any idea of where she might have put this bottle?” He glares at Mike with clear disgust at him putting something so valuable in such a weak hiding place.

  “Because I got to tell you, Sam.” Luis clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Without that key, we’re going to have to start punishing everyone involved. And I’m not saying that you’re involved, Sam . . . but we all know the fondness that Mike and you share.”

  Punishing. I’ve seen what that looks like. Mike once showed me a photo that Luis sent him, of a developer who had screwed us out of a real estate commission. The man’s eyes had been cut out while he was still alive.

  Hmm. The moral dilemma here is tough. I could share that I have the key, but then Mike would know that I saw Lillian after she took the bottle, which would lead to him figuring out that I am the one responsible for her death. Sharing the key would save his and Jacob’s lives but certainly ruin any chance of us getting back together—so Mike would be officially, from this point forward, lost as a long-term relationship prospect. My heart sags at the thought because I truly did see us together. Not in my house—we’d buy a much bigger property and travel. So much travel. Mike always told Lillian that he was afraid to fly, and that was why they road-tripped everywhere, but those road trips had been to cover up items that he was transporting and side errands that he went on. In truth, Mike loves a first-class seat as much as the next man, and we’ve escaped on mini-trips all over the country together. I had anticipated so, so much more, once we were out from underneath her thumb.

  “So let me ask you, Sam. You knew Lillian well. Can you think of anywhere she would have put this box and bottle?” Luis stands up and walks in front of me.

  My dilemma comes around full circle with the amount of money involved. If my relationship with Mike is dead either way—by his death or by me confessing that I killed Lillian—then shouldn’t I at least benefit from the money? That kind of money is more than life-changing. It is life-creating. It could insulate me with enough security and anonymity to ensure a long, happy, and peaceful life, one of extravagant wealth. I deserve that. I’ve earned that.

  “No,” I say weakly—and it comes out perfectly and convincingly. “I . . . I don’t have any idea where it could be. But please—maybe if you give Mike some more time, he could figure it out.” I put the focus back on Mike so cleanly, so perfectly, that I have to resist the urge to smile. Sometimes I do that—I give this smug smile that, as my father once said, makes someone want to “section off my lips with a bolt cutter.” Luis seems like he’d be good with a bolt cutter, so I keep my lips pinned together and my eyes concerned. Let’s not forget who is to blame here. Make Mike fix this.

  “Mike seems to be struggling with the motivation to figure it out. I think we could help him along.” Luis holds out his hand toward a man in a black T-shirt and a full beard. The man passes him a gun, which he swings toward me. I inhale sharply, but before I can speak, the gun is moving farther left, sweeping past Mike and stopping on Jacob.

  Jacob. When I met him, he was a chubby-cheeked twelve-year-old. We bonded over a shared love of crude comedians and action movies. He once confided in me that he found alien women more attractive than real ones. He thinks that his father is a dork and his mother is a horrible cook. He is terrified of high school judgments and opinions. In some ways, he is very similar to a young me. In other ways, I don’t understand a thing going through his head.

  It was hard for me to post that video of Lillian. Not because of her—I could give two shits about her. But I understood exactly how Jacob, his friends, and his school would react to this. I understood how deeply it would negatively affect him, and I needed that level of embarrassment—and his reaction to it—to properly damage Lillian and Mike’s marriage.