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was work.
    Dev said, “I heard from Warden Carmell at the MCC , and he said Mr. Delinn was shipped out on the bus at noon. Ten hours down to Butner. He’s due to arrive tonight.”

    Meredith closed her eyes. When her attorneys had called her to tell her Freddy had been given the maximum sentence, Meredith hadn’t been sure what they meant. She had turned on the TV and saw Freddy being led out of the courtroom in his light-gray suit, which no longer fit. The banner across the bottom of the screen read:
Delinn sentenced to
150
years.
Meredith had run for the kitchen sink, where she vomited up the half cup of tea she’d managed to ingest that morning. She heard a noise and she thought it was the TV, but it was the phone. She’d dropped the phone on the ground, and Burt was calling out, “Meredith, are you there? Hello? Hello?” Meredith hung up the phone and shut off the TV. She was done.
    She had gone into her bedroom and fallen back onto her king-size bed. She had sixteen hours until federal marshals came to escort her from her home and she would have to give up the sheets, which were as crisp as paper, the luscious silk quilt, the sumptuous down-filled duvet.
    One hundred and fifty years.
    Meredith had understood then that Freddy had taken her hand at the edge of a giant hole, and he had asked her to jump with him, and she had agreed. She’d jumped without knowing how deep the hole was or what would happen when they hit the bottom.

    “Okay,” Meredith said to Dev now, although obviously the fact that Freddy was going to prison for two or three lifetimes wasn’t okay. She was so angry with Freddy that she wanted to rip her hair out, but the thought of him on that bus crushed her.
    “The sticking point with your investigation…”
    “I know the sticking point.”
    “They can’t seem to get past it,” Dev said. “Do you have anything to add?”
    “Nothing to add,” Meredith said.
    “Anything to amend?”
    “Nothing to amend.”
    “You know how bad it looks?” Dev said. “Fifteen million dollars is a lot of money, Meredith.”
    “I have nothing to add or amend,” Meredith said. “I told it all in my deposition. Do they think I
lied
in my deposition?”
    “They think you lied in your deposition,” Dev said. “Lots of people do.”
    “Well, I didn’t,” Meredith said.
    “Okay,” Dev said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “If you think of anything you want to add or amend, just call. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch.”
    “What about Leo?” Meredith said. “Please tell me about Leo.”
    “I didn’t hear from Julie today,” Dev said. Julie Schwarz was Leo’s attorney. It was her job, now, to help federal investigators find Mrs. Misurelli, and to prove that Deacon Rapp was lying. “And days that I don’t hear from Julie are good days, much as I love her. It just means there’s no news. And as they say, no news is…”
    “Right,” Meredith said. She wasn’t going to utter the words “good news.” Not until she and Leo and Carver were free and clear. And together.
    Goddamn you, Freddy!
she thought (zillionth and first).
    A voice rang out from downstairs: it was Connie, calling her for dinner.

    They sat at a round teak table on the deck and gazed out at the indifferent ocean. The ocean didn’t care whether mankind lived or died or cheated or stole; it just kept rolling and tumbling over itself, encroaching, then receding.
    Connie had poured herself a glass of wine. She said, “Meredith, do you want wine?”
    “Do you have any red?”
    “Of course I have red,” Connie said, standing up.
    “No, wait. I don’t want it,” Meredith said. The chicken was cooking on the grill, and it smelled far more delicious than anything Meredith had eaten in months. Meredith would have loved a glass of red to go with the chicken and the fresh, delicious salad that they were now eating—Connie had whipped up the vinaigrette while Meredith looked on, astonished—but drinking a glass of red wine