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The only thing standing between it andJinis me.

Am I honestly thinking Jin would try driving me to suicide to cash in? That’s ridiculous.

Is it?

I’ve already been questioning whether my husband could be a sociopathic killer. I’ve been telling myself that no one ever really knows anyone, and Anton has only been back in my life for a few years, and am I really sure he couldn’t have killed Heather?

Now I’m refusing to believe something horrible of someone I’ve known for less time? Yes, Jin and I are close, but I don’t know him as well as I knew Anton, so if I’m questioning my husband…

If I’m questioning my husband, maybe it’s a sign that I need to get the hell out of this house. Stop this bullshit and leave.

I can’t leave because Jin has my damned car.

I sit there, staring down at the speakers, and then realize a fundamental truth. Jin is not dead. So, unlike my deceased husband, I don’t need a séance to ask him what the hell he’s doing.

I grab my phone and call. After six endless rings, it goes to voicemail. I frown down at the phone. Unlike my brother, Jin always answers while driving. Keith won’t, nor will he learn how to use Do Not Disturb while driving, and I swear sometimes he does it just to piss off his tech-savvy little sister.

Jin must be on the line. Not to Keith, who would give him shit for talking in the car, even over Bluetooth. But if itwereKeith on the other end, Jin would swap calls to tell me. It must be work.

I should wait patiently, but I just found out that my brother-in-law—and one of my best friends—faked my dead husband’s voice on a recording. I don’t give a shit about being patient or polite.

I call again. Again it goes to voicemail.

I text, but the message sits there, delivered but not read. As I stare at it, I reconsider whether I really want to speak to Jin right now. I can’t read his body language over the phone. This might be a conversation best held in person.

I turn the speakers over in my hand. Then I flip my phone to the notepad and start a list of everything I’ve experienced that I suspected could be Anton.

Next I go through the list and remove every voice that was definitely recorded.

I sort the rest of the list into things I thought were Anton and the rest.

Without those recorded reassurances, the Anton list is short. A few utterances, and one physical manifestation, where I thought I saw him lunging at me last night.

The only things that others experienced were those recordings, meaning the rest could be my imagination. If there’s any chance those thingswereAnton, none of them are clearly positive in nature. And for all the times I thought I heard him, there are none where I can say, beyond any doubt, that it wasn’t another recording.

Cirillo thought we had two entities here: Anton and some darker force. I’d worried that the darker forcewasAnton, and the onlything arguing against that was the quiet reassurances… which were fake.

But without those, there’s also no corroborated evidence of Anton at all. Cirillo was basing “Anton is here” on those recordings.

Now I really need to speak to Cirillo.

TWENTY-EIGHT

I’m not going to accuse Jin, but Cirillo has to know about the speakers. Basing his funding application on fake data could cost him his career. He can help me sort through the evidence and determine what is legitimate. Because some of itislegitimate, and whatever Jin has done, there’s no way he’s responsible for the invisible hands that have pushed me or pulled rugs from under me or slammed a spade into my shins.

I tuck the speakers into my pockets. I don’t want Shania seeing them until after I’ve spoken to Cirillo.

I can hear Shania tapping on her laptop in the breakfast nook, so I sneak around the other way, and pause in the kitchen. No sign of Cirillo, not even an empty mug by the sink. He must still be upstairs.

I climb to his room. The door’s closed. I knock. No answer. I knock again.

“Davos? I need to speak to you.”

Still nothing. I gingerly take hold of the doorknob. It goes a quarter turn and stops.

Locked.

Okay…