**Chapter 53**
**Betha's POV**
One day had passed.
Twenty four hours of sitting across from Cossette at my kitchen table, watching her drink her coffee and answer work emails and exist in her normal careful way, and not saying a single word about what I had heard in that hospital corridor.
It was the hardest thing I had done in recent memory.
And I had recently fake-given-birth in a corporate lobby with a pillow under my sweater, so the bar was not low.
The problem was simple and also enormous - what I had heard was not something you said casually. It wasn't something you dropped into conversation over breakfast. *Oh by the way, Frost said something strange about your father yesterday, pass the sugar.* It required certainty first. It required evidence. It required me to know exactly what I was saying before I said it to the person it would destroy most.
Because if I was right about what those words meant -
I wasn't going to think about that yet.
I watched Cossette from across the kitchen. She was reading something on her phone, legs tucked under her on my sofa, still slightly pale from the hospital but otherwise looking like herself - focused and sharp and quietly formidable in the way she always was when she was thinking about something.
She had asked me three times since yesterday if I was okay.
I kept saying yes.
I was not okay. But I was also not going to tell her why yet.
"I need to go to the grocery," I announced, standing up and reaching for my jacket with perhaps slightly too much purpose.
Cossette looked up. "I'll come."
"No," I said. "You need to rest. Doctor's orders."
"I'm fine, Betha -"
"Hospital pajamas were yesterday," I said firmly. "Rest today. I'll be back in an hour."
She looked at me for a moment with those blue eyes that had known me our entire lives and missed approximately nothing.
"Are you sure you're okay?" she said.
"Completely," I said. "Do you want anything specific?"
A pause.
"Mochi," she said finally.
"Obviously," I said, and left before she could ask anything else.
---
The café was small and quiet and far enough from anywhere either of us usually went that running into someone we knew was unlikely. Ray was already there when I arrived - corner table, coffee in front of him, jacket on the chair beside him, looking like a man who had also spent the last twenty four hours not sleeping particularly well.
I sat down.
The waiter came. I ordered coffee. We waited until he left.
Then Ray said: "I've been going over it."
"So have I," I said.
"*You've done enough with her father already.*"
"Yes."
"That could mean -"
"It means exactly what it sounds like," I said. "We both know it means exactly what it sounds like."
Ray was quiet for a moment. He turned his coffee cup in his hands - a habit I had noticed he had when he was thinking. Around and around. Steady and contained.
"So what do we do," he said. Not a question exactly. More like the beginning of a conversation.
"We open an investigation," I said. "Properly. The two of us."
He blinked. "Investigation."
"Yes."
"Betha, we're a food industry CEO and a -"
"And a Bethany Kelman I know what we are," I said. "I also know Anika. I know how she works. I know her weaknesses." I paused. "I'm not going to use most of them yet. But here's what we need first - we need her phone. Her contacts. Whatever is on it."
Ray stared at me.
"And how," he said slowly, "do you suggest we get Anika's phone."
I looked at him across the table.
"She's not a loyal person," I said. "She never has been. She goes where the power is - it's the only language she speaks." I folded my hands on the table. "You are currently the number one CEO in our industry. Top of every list. Wealthiest. Most powerful. Most visible."
Ray said nothing.
He was already seeing where this was going and his expression was doing something complicated about it.
"If you got close to her," I said. "Let her think you were interested. Let her think something could happen -"
Ray stood up.
"You want me to sleep with her."
"No," I said immediately. "Absolutely not. Not sleeping - just close enough that she lets her guard down. Close enough that she's distracted. And then you disappear with her phone long enough for us to find what we need."
He sat back down slowly. Ran a hand through his hair.
"How do I disappear with her phone, Betha. This is Anika. She doesn't let things out of her sight."
"I'll handle that part," I said.
"Handle it how."
I reached into my bag and placed a small item on the table between us.
Ray looked at it.
"Betha -"
"Sleeping pills," I said. "The kind that dissolve. Very standard. Very safe. She'll wake up with a headache and no memory of the last three hours and we'll have everything we need."
Ray stared at the table for a long moment.
Then he looked up at me. "And after? Even if we find something on her phone - what then? What do we actually do with it?"
"That's step two," I said. "And for step two we're going to need help."
"From who."
"Emily Irkinz," I said. "Forensic medicine doctor. She can tell us whether what happened to Anthony Jonas was actually natural - whether there's anything still detectable, whether an original autopsy could have missed something, whether there's a path to proving it." I paused. "She's also motivated. She knows Cossette. She's been trying to make things right ."
Ray was quiet.
He turned his coffee cup around again. Once. Twice.
"Betha," he said. "Anthony Jonas has been dead for over a year."
"I know."
"A body that's been in the ground for a year -"
"Is not fully decomposed," I said. "Not yet. Not necessarily. Emily would know better than either of us - but it's not impossible. It's worth finding out."
Ray shivered slightly. Just once. Controlled immediately.
"This is genuinely one of the most unsettling conversations I've ever had," he said.
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"You're not sorry."
"I'm a little sorry."
He almost smiled. Almost.
"What's the first step," he said. "Right now. Today."
I leaned forward.
Closed the distance across the small table until I was close enough for him to hear me clearly without anyone else in the café having any chance of catching a word.
"First step," I said quietly, "is getting closer to their circle."
I held his gaze.
"Can you do that, Ray?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he picked up his coffee.
"I already am in their circle," he said. "I've been Frost's enemy for six years. I know exactly how he moves." He took a sip. Set the cup down. "The question is whether I can get close to Anika without Frost noticing."
"Can you?"
A pause.
"Yes," he said.
I sat back.
"Good," I said. "Then we start today."