Chapter 34 · Whoever's Name Is On It

"Say it again." My voice came out wrecked, still catching on his name. "Tell me that's not your name on that screen."

Knox didn't answer right away. He was already moving, bare-chested, one hand flat on the vault wall behind me like he needed the steel to hold himself up. His shirt was somewhere on the floor, torn at the collar where I'd grabbed it and pulled. There was a mark blooming under his jaw, finger-shaped. Mine.

The control screen kept glowing over his shoulder. HOLD RETAINED. BENEFACTOR TRANSFER: COMPLETE. KNOX HALE.

"It's my name," he said finally. Flat. Like he was tasting it for the first time and didn't like it. "I don't know how it got there."

"You don't know." I shoved off the wall and grabbed for the evidence tray on instinct, before I even had my pants sitting right. The tray had gone over during — during whatever that was — and the match stems were scattered across the tile like a spilled ashtray. Chain of custody, broken. Physically broken, right there on the floor between us. "You had to sign something. Nobody just becomes a benefactor."

"I didn't touch a keypad.