The reply was instantaneous.
Come to Jasmines
She opened the door without meeting my eye. I’d been texting them both for weeks. Jasmine had consistently claimed she hadn’t spoken to Trevor and didn’t know where he was.
Inside the apartment, he lolled on the sofa with his older daughter snuggled against him. Baby London rested in his lap. They were watching Paw Patrol.
He glanced at me, returned to the screen.
Jasmine took the baby from him. “Sienna. Let’s go. Daddy’s gotta talk to this man.”
She strapped the baby in a stroller and the three of them left.
Trevor appeared slightly healthier than the last time I’d seen him flailing in a hospital bed. His color was back, his cheeks were fuller, he’d bathed and shaved and his clothes hadn’t come out of a dumpster. But his eyes remained hazy, and he wiggled his bare, misshapen toes against the carpeting.
The show was still playing. Paw Patrol were on a roll.
I shut it off. “The cops know about the boat. They have a victim who’s passed a poly, says Adam and Olivia brought him there and tried to drug and handcuff him.”
“No.”
“He fought them off. But there’s three other guys who died.”
“Nope.” He was shaking his head. “Nope, nope, nope.”
“There’s blood in the bedroom, Trevor.”
“What’s she saying?”
“It was all Adam.”
“He didn’t do shit.”
“I need you to understand something,” I said. “They’re going to arrest her, and she’s gonna get up in court, in front of everyone, and blame him for everything. Everything. Okay? That’s her defense: what a horrible guy Adam was. And guess what? People are going to believe her. Because he’s not around to defend himself.”
Trevor’s face was taut with anger. “It was an accident.”
“Okay. How?”
“They were getting high and the guy stopped breathing. They thought he was dead. They freaked out and threw him in. Then the guy started moving around, trying to swim. But he couldn’t.”
“This is the first time it happened?”
Trevor nodded.
Denny Kudelka. “Did they try to pull him out?”
Trevor didn’t answer.
“An accident like that happens once,” I said.
Silence.
“She liked it,” he said. “It turned her on.”
“So they did it again? On purpose?”
He said nothing.
“When did Adam tell you this?” I asked.
“Last year.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think, please.”
Silence.
“After Christmas,” he said.
“How long after?”
“A few weeks.”
“Is that when he gave you the watch?”
Trevor nodded.
“Why did he come to you?”
“He felt bad.”
I said, “You need to tell that to the cops.”
“No fucking way.”
“It’s the only way he avoids becoming a monster. The fact that he felt bad. Feeling bad is important, Trevor.”
“I’m not talking to them.”
“You want her to have the last word? She drags Adam, gets off scot-free?”
He fidgeted. More than nerves. Jonesing. “Stay here.”
From a back room he brought a gallon-sized zip-top bag.
He knelt on the carpet and dumped out the contents. Coins, matches, pills, his tangled phone charger.
A thick, heavy gold watch.
Brushing it aside, he plucked out an SD card in a plastic case and tossed it to me.
“What’s on here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never looked at it.”
“He told me not to,” he said. “He said hang on to it unless something happens between him and Olivia.”
“What did he think would happen?”
“This.”
Silence.
“You need to come with me,” I said, “and tell the cops what you told me.”
“Can’t you just give it to them?”
“They need to know where it came from.”
“So tell them.”
“They need to hear it from you.”
He drew in fetally, began to rock. “Shit.”
“You’re not in trouble,” I said. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
He looked at me like I was an idiot.
The SD card contained a single video file, eighty-seven minutes long.
Created at twelve nineteen a.m. on January 1, 2026, it opened in the main cabin of Motion Sickness, every inch as luxe as Damian Roby had described: teak floors, mirrored walls, marble vanity, recessed lighting. A sliding glass door gave onto a balcony, which in turn gave an oblique view of the nighttime harbor, diamonds and rubies beading the freeway, the scarred city made beautiful by distance and darkness.
Amid the opulence, one item stood out for its brutal practicality.
A large black rolling case, deep, rugged, and blocky — the kind used to protect and transport delicate cargo. Electronics, firearms, video equipment.
Olivia lounged on the king-sized bed in her underwear, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. She was holding a red plastic cup. Her toenails were pink. Beside her, Linus Hao sat nude against the headboard, holding his own cup and staring awkwardly at the ceiling. His penis was limp. With her free hand she was caressing his cheek, telling him not to worry, it happened.
Having started the camera, Adam appeared from behind it and picked up a third cup off the nightstand. They toasted and drank.
Linus gagged but managed to force it down. He didn’t want to disappoint any worse than he already had.
Olivia turned his face toward hers. Held him fast and kissed him hard.
Adam perched on the bed, watching.
He reached for Linus’s penis.
Linus batted his hand away.
Adam relented, doing nothing for several minutes as Linus’s body began to slacken and slide down the headboard.
Adam reached for him again.
Grunting, Linus pushed them both away. With difficulty he climbed from the bed and stood, swooning.
Olivia warned him not to puke, he’d better not fucking puke.
Linus pitched sideways into the mirrored wall. He began groping forward, held up by his own reflection, leaving a smear.
Olivia asked where he thought he was going.
He didn’t answer.
She ordered him to get back here.
He didn’t. He was wilting, torso nearly parallel to the floor.
She jumped up and grabbed him by the arm. Hey.
He yanked free.
Olivia frowned.
The image quality was excellent, the lighting was balanced. Adam was a pro, he knew what he was doing, and her wordless rage at being disobeyed shone through.
She went to the rolling case.
Unlatched the top and removed a heavy-duty tripod.
Livvy Adam said.
Linus looked up, dumbly following the path of the tripod as she raised it, ax-like. He tried to speak. His mouth wasn’t working.
Olivia brought the tripod down on his skull.
He sank to his knees.
Audible snap as a second blow broke his collarbone. He dropped to the floor.
As Olivia continued to beat him, Adam stayed on the bed, looking on, doing nothing, his face numb and fossilized, form without purpose.
Blood splashed the mirror; the nightstand. Blood speckled the sheets.
Adam said Livvy.
She stopped, chest heaving.
Adam got up and went to examine Linus, who lay prone, breathing shallowly, bleeding onto the teak.
Olivia opened the balcony door and cleared a path, folding back a rug to avoid staining it.
Adam took Linus’s ankles. Olivia took his wrists.
Linus moaned.