Page 118 of I’ll Be Watching You

I frisked him.

“Hey!” he said again.

“Just making sure you don’t have a weapon on you.” I also looked under the couch cushions. Nothing. He didn’t even have a Swiss Army knife. Clearly, he hadn’t come prepared.

“Talk,” I said.

“No,” he said. “If I tell you everything, you’ll leave me here to be murdered.”

“I’m not going to let you die. I need you to tell the police everything you tell me. But so help me God, I will punch you in the face if you don’t start talking.”

Cal came in with a mug of coffee and handed it to Tim.

Tim frowned. “It’s black.”

Cal stared at him. I had never seen him look so angry before.

“Drink the coffee now,” he said, his voice low and gruff.

Tim sipped. He wrinkled his nose in disgust, but when he saw Cal’s expression, he took another sip.

“Running was stupid,” I said. “If you had gone to the police, or the FBI like I told you, or even called me from a hotel in Phoenix, this would be over by now.”

“You don’t know these people!”

“Tell me what you know about the night Devin Klein was murdered.”

He hesitated.

“I swear, if you lie to me I will hog-tie you, throw you in the back of my car, and take you straight to Phoenix PD over the bumpiest roads I can find.”

“Okay. Okay. I made a key card like I told you. Gave it to Peter. Then, like, a couple days later, Dr. Klein is shot. Peter said your dad killed him, that they were corrupt and, like, um, involved in something shady and there’s no honor among thieves.”

“And you believed that,” I said flatly.

“I had no reason not to. Then, um, he asked me to make this website, told me it had to go down shortly after it was viewed. It was, um, of pictures.”

“Of me? My family?”

He had the good sense to stare into his mug. Cal hit him on the back of the head.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “He told me it was to protect the medical center, that if Dr. Angelhart told the police about the fraud he and Dr. Klein were involved in, that it would get my uncle fired.”

“And you believed that.” This guy was unbelievable.

“It made sense the way he explained it,” Tim mumbled.

“And then?” Cal pushed.

“The next morning, Peter asked me to come to his office. And then he said he needed the security log wiped to delete the generic card I created. There was another man in the office with him, someone I’d never seen before.”

“And did you?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know who the guy was?”

Tim shook his head. “He was scary-looking. In his forties. All frowning, like he was mad at Peter. I got out of there as quickly as possible.”