Richard took the page out of Kai's hand.Kai let him.His father held it close to his face in the weak glow from the Bentley's open door. His lips moved silently as he read. Location. Time. Victim. His eyes reached the last line and stopped.For a long moment, he didn't move at all.Then his knees gave out.He didn't fall so much as fold, sinking down onto the steel guardrail at the edge of the shoulder like a puppet with its strings cut. The page trembled in his fingers. His breath came in short, ragged pulls."Derek," he whispered.Kai said nothing."He'd just turned eighteen. Helen bought him a car for graduation. A black Porsche. I told her it was too much, too fast for a boy his age, and she laughed at me." Richard stared at the page. "That spring, it went into the shop for a month. Helen said he'd scraped it against a gate at the country club. I never even went to look at it."His voice broke on the last word."A month," he said. "A month in the shop. And I never asked."The win

Helen Sterling had been awake since five.She always was. Sleep was for people who could afford to be surprised.She sat in the morning room of Sterling House with the wedding seating chart spread across a white linen tablecloth, a cup of black tea at her elbow, a silver pen in her hand. Four hundred guests. Thirty-eight tables. Two senators, three judges, the police commissioner, the mayor, and half the board of every company in Ashford that mattered.Each name was a favor owed. Each seat was a message.She moved the mayor two tables closer to the head table and made a small, neat note in the margin.At fifty-four, Helen was still beautiful in the way that took work. Her blonde hair was swept into a smooth chignon. Her skin was flawless. Her cream silk blouse had been pressed at six. She looked exactly like what the magazines called her: the gracious first lady of Ashford's most powerful family.She had built every inch of that image herself.The door opened without a knock. Only one