He sat behind the glass, looking older, his hair thinning. He didn’t look like the man in the designer sunglasses anymore.
“I have five million, Dana,” he hissed, his eyes darting toward the guard. “In a crypto-wallet. I’ll give you the keys. Just get me a transfer to a lower-security facility. Just tell them I’m a witness.”
Dana looked at him, not with anger, but with a terrifying, calm pity.
“There is no money, Caleb. There never was. You spent it all trying to buy a life you weren’t big enough to live.”
She leaned into the microphone. “And even if there were millions, I wouldn’t touch it. Because I don’t need your foundation anymore. I’ve built my own, and it’s made of something you don’t understand: Integrity.“
Caleb slammed his fist against the glass. “You’re nothing without me! I made you! I packed that bag and I made you a headline!”
“No,” Dana said, standing up. “You packed a bag. But I’m the one who carried it out of the darkness. Enjoy the silence, Caleb. It’s the only thing you have left.”
Epilogue: The Horizon
Dana walked out of the prison and into the rain. She didn’t feel the weight of the handcuffs anymore. She didn’t hear the beeping of the TSA scanner.
She got into her car and checked her phone. A message from a woman in Ohio she was helping: “I did it, Dana. I left. I’m safe. Thank you for the map.”
Dana smiled. It wasn’t the smug, predatory smile Caleb had given her at LAX. It was the smile of a woman who had survived a shipwreck and was now a lighthouse.
She drove away, and in her rearview mirror, the prison faded into the gray mist until it was just another shape in a world that Caleb no longer controlled.
