Jeffery Vance had been eyeing that fifteen million dollars for quite some time, and he understood, with the slick instinct of a man who has built his whole personality around chasing money, that this was the precise moment to play the dependable boyfriend. He looped his arm around Marcia Graham's shoulders, drawing her against his side in a gesture meant to look protective, and arranged his face into a careful, contrite mask.
"You really can't pin all of this on Marcia," he said, his voice pitched to the warm, reasonable register of a man volunteering to take a bullet. "The truth is, I'm the one who misread the situation. I should have known better. Let me apologize to little Hailey here, properly. Thank God she's safe. If anything had actually happened to her, I'd carry the guilt of it f
