It had taken a while, but after I finished telling Cameron Zehringer Jr the whole story, his face fell into thoughtful silence. Then he asked if I wanted a drink.

I almost took him up on it to be polite, but finally stuck to my guns and declined. Cameron moved to stand up for his own, but fell back into the wicker lounger with the same expression.

'Maybe I should cut back myself,' he said.

I smiled at him. 'You're still just a kid,' I said.

He shook his head at that. 'But I'm not, am I? Neither was the other guy. Gene. Wait—you forgot to tell me about why Gene was keeping Sebastian at the construction site in the first place.'

I smiled. 'Sorry, it's a lot to keep track of. I'll see if I can remember it all: so, it turns out that Gene didn't kidnap Sebastian from the motel after all, even though he was going to to frame his father. Actually, Sebastian convinced him that they could run away after all these years and finally be together.'

'But he wasn't going to,' Cameron said.

I shook my head. 'I think he'd already guessed that Gene was the one who killed Sam, so he was just buying time. He convinced Gene that he should hide out at the Pillar Bay site while Gene went back to the city to sort everything out and find the money. But Gene also struck a deal with the security guard to keep Sebastian there so he wouldn't renege and run off.

'So, when Bo took me there to get rid of me cleanly, it was by luck that he found Sebastian there as well and tied him up, before I did what I did to Bo and ran off to save my own skin. Gene found him like that the night he retrieved me, and chose to let him stay that way for the time being for simplicity's sake. Then, after I found out about the whole backstory from his father, he went back down to make off with Sebastian once and for all.'

After I was done, I let out a breath and Cameron shook his head.

'Well, how do you feel about all of it now that you know?' I asked him.

'I have no idea.' He looked out at the swimming pool on his stone terrace, and then at the wide view of the city in the valley below. Then he looked back at me.

'Thanks for telling me, Holden. I just can't get over it... I knew someone. His name was Sebastian Abbott. But it wasn't him at all—it was like a phantom of him.'

'I guess the only thing you can do is hope that the next person you meet is real. Isn't that what all of us hope for?'

Cameron had a frightened look darken suddenly over his youthful face. 'But what if I do meet someone? And I love him—just like Gene loved Sebastian?'

I had nothing to say to that. I looked away and Cameron did too, but we both knew the answer anyway. Thankfully, we didn't have to say it to each other.

I looked at my watch. 'I should get back to town before it gets dark,' I said.

'Wait, Holden, there's still one last thing. What about the money—where was it?'

I almost laughed. I'd forgotten about it entirely. 'Buried at the development site the whole time, where only Sebastian knew where. He gave it over to the police, along with a full on-the-record confession about Kerr and Randolph. If he's lucky, he'll get off with a suspended sentence for everything that's happened over the last four years. And maybe he'll finally get his life back.'

'I hope so.' Cameron looked down. 'I almost feel like I want to meet him. Doesn't that sound crazy? I don't know him at all, but I feel like I do. Like I just know the version of him that's in my head that never existed.'

'But that wasn't even him,' I said.

Cameron shook his head. 'No. It wasn't. It was like some split version of him.' Then he smiled bleakly. 'Maybe he'll get all of himself back finally.'

I nodded back at him. 'I hope so, too.'

Cameron stood and shook my hand with a dim smile on his pale face.

'Thanks for everything, Holden. Again. I feel like even though you weren't working for me through all this, I should pay you your rates for it...'

'Forget it. If I didn't need a million dollars, I can live without a couple of days hazard pay as well.'

He suddenly bared his full white teeth at me. 'But you do have to keep in mind a manuscript, though. Not a sports memoir anymore, maybe something like, Holden Burke: Confessions of a Private Eye. From the Stadium to the Streets.'

'There are too many books like that out there already, God knows. Goodbye, Cameron.'

As I drove away from Cameron's Zehringer Jr's big home, down through the winding hills and back to the city, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that the shift in altitude didn't help. The case was over, but that didn't make it any easier.

But, oddly enough, the ending I was happiest about was the knowledge that I hadn't taken a life myself. That night in Pillar Bay, Bo had stumbled after me out in a state of shock, hit the main road by accident, was clipped by a car and taken to the police where he was kept as a person of interest. After Gene's arrest two days later, they knew what the interest was. Bo decided to turn tails and give a full testimony against Travis Kerr.

Kerr and Randolph were both finally in jail for crimes they couldn't buy their way out of. Gene was, too, but I didn't hear anything about him other than that he pled guilty immediately. If I was a judge I would have charged him with second-degree murder on account of his history and relationship to his father, but that didn't seem to matter anymore. Sam Winterson was still dead.

But at the same time, Sebastian Abbott was back from the grave. His parents would have a second chance, if they were able to take it.

And all I could hope was that he could be made whole again, because it isn't easy living a life split in two.

***