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.” He pats the folder with one hand and then clasps her hands in his again, squeezing.“I should have said something sooner.I realize that now.But I was just so unsure…” the tears fall over his lashes and roll down his cheeks.Lacey feels a pull, and she shakes her head again.“Riddel is a real cop? He’s really investigating this whole thing?”James nods, his smile getting wider.“He’s helping me, Lace, so everyone can know the truth.”“But the Simonellis…they were murdered, James.You didn’t really have anything to do with that, did you?”He lowers his head but not before Lacey catches the barest hint of a smile cross his lips.Unless she imagined it.He is crying harder, nearly sobbing.“It was awful, Lacey, just terrible.That guy, William…he tried to kill me! I was in his garage, that’s true, but when he knew what I’d come there for…he just went crazy, and he tried to kill me, and I just struck back in self-defense, and then the old lady, she came out and stumbled or something…I’m not even sure, he might have pushed her…and she died…” He is crying much harder now, the words choking out of him.Lacey’s instinct is to pull him to her, to comfort him, but she resists it.She wants to believe him, she wants to but…“James, how did you know? That this…object…was in his garage? I don’t see how…”He smiles and squeezes her hands again.Then he wipes under his eyes and brushes his sleeve across his nose.He sits back on his haunches.“There were signs.Messages.I was led to it.”James’ irises are nearly black, shining brightly with refracted tears.He puts his hands on his thighs and straightens in one easy movement.Then he puts his hands on his hips, a small smile playing over his lips, one eyebrow cocking up slightly.“Want to see it?”Lacey looks up at him, still dazed, almost…almost believing.She wants so badly to believe.She nods.James’ smile gets wider, and he pulls her–chair and all–back from the desk.He bends over the middle drawer and opens it, forgetting to use his key–forgetting, in fact, that there is no key.That this drawer doesn’t lock and never has.He reaches to the back, fishing, fishing, and pulls his hand out, closed protectively over…something.James feels the heat in his palm, in the curve of his fingers.He sees everything coming to rights.He knows Laycee will be just as amazed as he was, as Riddel was.Laycee will see that everything is going according to plan.Then she can help him…finish it.He opens his hand.Lacey gasps and pushes herself further back in the chair.She is frozen, trembling in awe.Tears of joy spill down her cheeks, and James feels an overwhelming wave of love for her, for Riddel, for Archer, for the object…for everything…because it’s almost done now.Chapter 31Lacey had leaned slightly forward when James brought his hand from the desk.She feels her salvation and her ruination hanging in the space surrounding his closed fist.She looks into his calm, shining eyes.His grin widens, becomes a smile, then it overbalances and becomes a tight grimace…and he opens his hand.A small child’s toy–a tin top–lies rusty and dented in his palm.It had been William Simonelli’s when he was a child.He had not been an excessively sentimental man, but his mother had given him this toy, and William could remember playing with it for hours on end as she cooked, cleaned, talked with her girlfriends, served his father meals, and finally as she lay in bed, dying in her twenty-seventh year of life.He can remember spinning and spinning the top, listening as the doctor said ‘nothing more to do’ to his father.And he can remember holding the top in his pocket, his small fingers grasping it desperately as they lowered her casket into the ground.William had never been able to part with it, and it had spent the last forty or so years in his garage, in a special box on his workbench.He’d made the box by hand, putting it together with small, leftover strips of mahogany, and then polishing it until it glowed mellowly in the dim garage light.From time to time, he’d thought about giving it over to his children, but then he’d look at his children’s toys–cars and trucks, games, toy guns, toy horses, Barbies, tractors, Legos, coloring books, markers–and he’d consider the humble tin top and decide that might be a bad idea, after all.When he died, no one knew the top was missing because no one knew it existed except for Antoinella, and of course, Antoinella was dead, too.Lacey doesn’t know any of this, but she knows with final and unshakable surety that James has lost his mind.And she knows, too, that she is in deep, deep trouble.Tears roll down her cheeks as terror thrums through her body, tightening her muscles, pushing her back in the chair.She glances up at James, the brief thought that maybe this, this is the punch line to his elaborate joke is wiped from her mind when she beholds his straining, grinning face.His eyes protrude, and his lips are stretched so wide over his teeth that she can see small splits where his skin is ripping.The tendons in his neck are tight, and deep shadows appear between them, making him appear lizard-like.His hair is disheveled, greasy, and pulled every which way.His shirt is spotted with stains, and his armpits are ringed where sweat had dried and run and dried again.She sees everything.She sees it all.His frantic gaze has been locked onto the rusty toy in his hand, but now his eyes shift to hers.His expression of a joy so profound that it has burned up his brain falters slightly, and he takes a short step toward her.“You see? You see now?” he asks, holding his hand higher, closer to her face.Lacey senses the impatience in his eyes and voice is one shaky step from tumbling into full-blown rage.She nods her head, still staring into his eyes, frozen in her terror.Concern and fear come into his eyes, and he almost looks like himself.“Lacey? Don’t be afraid…it won’t hurt you, I promise.”She nods again, her eyes still not leaving his, and now impatience draws his features down.“Lacey, dammit.What are you so afraid of? Look at it…it’s proof! Don’t you understand? It’s proof that…that…” His eyes close, and his free hand pinches the bridge of his nose.He pinches savagely, his forefinger and thumb seeming to disappear into the tight nest of skin as his brows pull down.His voice is furry, deep and quiet.“I don’t understand why you’re so…being so…stubborn about this.I said I had proof, and I show you proof, and you sit there like it’s…like it’s…something I made up! Something not real!” His voice has escalated into a shout, and he pulls his hand away from his eyes
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