Chapter 6: What Nathan Decided to Say
Detective Raines arrived forty minutes later with two officers and a woman from the district attorney's office named Petra Holloway, who carried a leather folio and spoke in short, precise sentences that suggested she had done this kind of thing many times before.
Dominic met them in the entrance hall and walked them through it in order: the cellar, the lock, Mia's condition, the travel bag, the photographs, the drive.
He handed over the USB.
Petra Holloway placed it in an evidence bag without comment.
"Where is Mr.
Cross now?" Raines asked.
"East sitting room.
He's been there for the past hour."
"And Ms.
Whitmore?"
"Conservatory, last I saw.
She hasn't left the property."
Raines nodded to one of the officers, who moved toward the south corridor.
They found Nathan exactly where Marcus had left him — seated in the wingback chair nearest the window, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, a posture that was working very hard to appear relaxed.
He looked up when Dominic entered with Raines and Holloway behind him.
"Detective," Nathan said.
He didn't look surprised.
That was the tell.
"Mr.
Cross." Raines set his folio on the side table.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Of course." Nathan glanced at Dominic.
"Dom, I want you to know — whatever you think happened, I want the chance to explain.
Seventeen years.
That has to count for something."
"It did," Dominic said.
"That's why I'm giving you the chance to speak before I leave the room."
Nathan's eyes moved to Petra Holloway.
Then back to Dominic.
"Who is she?"
"District attorney's office," Holloway said.
She didn't look up from her folio.
Nathan uncrossed his legs.
Both feet went to the floor.
"I want an attorney," he said.
"That's your right," Raines said.
"We can wait."
"I want one before I say anything else."
Dominic looked at him.
Seventeen years.
The burning car.
The hospital room where Dominic had spent four days after the accident that took his first wife.
Nathan had sat outside that room for three of those four days.
Dominic had thought, at the time, that it was loyalty.
"The recordings exist, Nathan," Dominic said.
"Eleven of them.
Your voice is on most of them.
Whatever your attorney tells you to say, that part is already settled."
Nathan's jaw moved.
He looked at the window.
"She was going to tell you," he said.
Not to Raines.
To Dominic.
"Mia.
She overheard the conversation with your attorney and she was going to tell you about the will revision, about Claire's reaction.
She came to me first.
She thought I should know." He paused.
"She trusted me."
"And?"
"And Claire found out she'd spoken to me.
Claire decided she was a liability." He said it with the careful flatness of a man who has chosen his words very precisely.
"I didn't plan what happened in the cellar.
That was Claire's decision."
"But you stood at the top of the stairs," Dominic said.
"And you watched."
Nathan said nothing.
"And you signed off on the lock."
Still nothing.
"And you told a four-year-old child, three separate times over three days, that her mother had gone to Pennsylvania."
Nathan's throat moved.
"I want my attorney," he said again.
His voice was smaller this time.
Raines stepped forward.
"Mr.
Cross, I'm going to ask you to come with us."
Nathan stood.
He straightened his shirt — a reflex, automatic, the gesture of a man whose habits were still running even when everything else had stopped.
He looked at Dominic one last time.
"For what it's worth," Nathan said, "I did pull you out of that car."
"I know you did," Dominic said.
It was the last thing either of them said to each other.
Raines walked Nathan out through the entrance hall.
The front door opened and closed.
Dominic stood alone in the east sitting room for a moment.
May you like
The wingback chair still held the shape of Nathan's posture.
He turned away from it and walked back toward the medical wing, where the doctor had been with Mia for the past two hours.
