The World Never Ended novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Hallway

Shane's POV

The stitches in my side pulled every time I sat down, so I stood in the courthouse hallway for an hour.

It was the Monday that finished six weeks.

The hearing on Dean's petition was at nine, and by nine fifteen the judge had thrown it out.

His lawyer had stood alone at the table, and said his client could not be reached.

Nobody in that room had been surprised.

I had watched from the back row with my arm still stiff from the iron.

Cora had sat at the front in a plain gray suit that Sylvia had bought her.

She did not turn around once.

Now I stood by a bench in the hall with a banker's box in my arms, and I waited for the man I had called on Friday.

He was a prosecutor with a tired face, and he came out of an elevator with a young woman carrying a laptop.

"Mr. Colgan," he said. "You understand what you're about to do."

"I understand."

"Say it to me again, so the record has it."

"This box holds the drives from the compound," I said. "Five years, every room but the bathrooms."

"And the server?"

"In the lawyer's car. My crew roster, my invoices, the contract with Gordon Sandstrom, and every payment."

"And you signed the statement."

"I signed it last night."

It said I had built the place and run it.

It said I had known about the babies after the first birth, and told no one for three years.

It had my name and my company's name on the first page.

A man who signs that does not keep his license, or his insurance, or his contracts.

Colgan Event Group had forty-one people on payroll, and I had called every one of them on Saturday.

"I'm taking the weight," I had said. "You were told it was a set. You didn't know what was in the room."

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