In Sickness and in Lies novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Let Her Walk

The dark SUV was a private investigator, and Cilla made it home.

She texted Bruce one word at midnight.

Safe.

By morning my litigator was sitting at his kitchen table with the three ledgers open in front of her.

Her reading glasses were pushed up in her hair.

"Here's the problem," she said. "The books are in Cilla's code. Nobody else can read them in four days."

"She told us."

"So if you put her name in a headline, she will not sit in a boardroom and explain them."

She tapped the ledger.

"You can have her humiliated or you can have the company. Not both."

I had spent a month picturing the humiliation.

I knew exactly which table, which room, which dress.

I had pictured Cilla's face.

Bruce poured coffee and said nothing, because I had asked him not to push.

"I'll take the company," I said.

My litigator raised an eyebrow.

"It's the bigger thing. It's what he built, and it's mine." I closed the ledger. "She walks."

"After what she did to you?"

"After what she did, she gives me every stone. In person. Tonight."

The beach house stood on a bluff above Lake Michigan, white clapboard and glass.

A terrace ran the length of the lake side.

I had never been inside it.

Bruce stayed in the car at my request, with the heater running, and my litigator waited on the stairs.

Cilla opened the door before I knocked.

She wore jeans and a gray sweater and no makeup.

She looked ten years older and strangely relieved.

"He's in the city," she said. "Board prep, until eleven."

"I know. Where are they?"

She led me through a living room full of white furniture to a table in the kitchen.

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