Page 155 of Gone Before Goodbye

Nadia lifts the gun. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying. Trace was supposed to come. I waited for him. But instead, I don’t know, he stole that device from Apollo Longevity and ran.”

She shakes her head. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Nadia, we both know he did. You heard Steve.”

“And then what? Where is he now?”

Maggie shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You’re lying.” Nadia pushes the gun toward Maggie’s face. “You killed him.”

And then Maggie hears another voice, a familiar voice, from behind her:

“She’s not lying. She didn’t kill Trace.”

She turns to see Porkchop.

“I did.”

Porkchop has a gun too. He tells Nadia to drop hers. She does. He tells her to kick it away. She does. Then Porkchop turns to Maggie. He doesn’t so much as glance at Nadia anymore. It’s as though she’s not even there.

It’s Maggie. It’s Porkchop.

The rest of the world fades away.

Maggie feels her extremities go cold. She doesn’t know what to do. She stands there, shaking her head.

“We didn’t know,” Maggie says to him.

“We did.”

“Not for sure,” she insists. “There were some discrepancies—”

“Not discrepancies,” Porkchop says. “You didn’t want to see the truth.”

“So you…” Maggie shakes her head again.

“Trace flew into Dulles. Just like Nadia told you. When he arrived, Pinky was at the airport. He followed him. Trace bought a gun from someone on the street. Can you guess why?”

Maggie just shakes her head.

“When we grabbed him, Trace had phenobarbital and clonazepam along with that gun on him. We, uh, interrogated him. He plannedto drug you. He planned to find out everything you knew—and then kill you. Stage your death to look like a suicide. You were depressed over Marc. Everyone knew that. He would tell the authorities that you called him, as the phone records would back up. You sounded suicidal and depressed. He caught the first plane over and came to your house and…” Porkchop shrugs away the rest of it.

Maggie can’t speak.

It’s Nadia who says, “So you just killed him?”

“Yes.” Porkchop’s voice is even, clear. There is no hesitation, no wavering. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. He turns and faces Nadia. “And you knew he killed my son. When Maggie called Trace—and then he vanished—most people wouldn’t leap to the conclusion that Maggie did something to him. But you did. Because you knew Maggie had motive. You knew what Trace had done to her husband.”

Nadia says nothing.

Porkchop raises the gun and points it at her.

Maggie says, “Porkchop.”

He ignores her. “Did you help Trace kill my son?”