“But before all that, he was wonderful to me, and thrilled about the baby. We didn’t have fertility treatment by the way, it happened on its own. We knew that I was ovulating, he got me drunk, and we had sex without protection. He knew what he was doing.” Bartlett was convinced of that by now, she was preaching to the choir. “And it worked. Anyway, for six months everything was wonderful, and after the miscarriage, it was fine again for the summer. But now, he’s angry at me all the time, or most of the time. Sometimes he’s absolutely wonderful to me again, and then he gets vicious. He’s drinking more than he used to. I think he’s pretty stressed about the lawsuit, and he’s not writing. And he’s really angry that I’ve been postponing the wedding. All of a sudden, we’re fighting all the time, and he’s always pushing me about something. He never did that before. It was perfect, he was wonderful to me, and he still is sometimes, but it’s bad more than it’s good now. And sometimes it changes so often and so suddenly, he goes from bad to good to bad to good again, my head is spinning. By the time I left Dublin a week ago, I was so confused, I didn’t know what to think. And he kept telling me I was going crazy. I started to believe him.”

“That’s what he wants you to believe. I can tell from talking to you, Hope, you’re not crazy. But I’m equally sure he is. I’m no psychiatrist, but this guy is a textbook case in sociopathy. This is very scary stuff, particularly trying to brainwash and confuse you. When did he ask you for the money?”

“A few weeks ago. He just came right out and asked for it. I said no, and we’ve been fighting ever since. It concerned me, so when I came to New York in November to do some work, I had my agent hire someone to do an investigation.” She sighed then, and told him what the report contained. “His brother thinks he’s a sociopath. Even his saying he was an only child wasn’t true, he had three brothers. His mother was a maid, not an aristocrat, his father died in a bar fight and wasn’t a doctor. Absolutely nothing he told me about his history is true, which is how I know the house in Ireland isn’t his ancestral home. And everybody else who’s ever known him says he’s a pathological liar.” That much they both knew was true from what she had told him so far. “The rest of the report came yesterday, and it’s no better. His wife died in an accident. He was driving drunk. He had told me she was alone in the car and died. The report says that he was with her, she was alive at the time of the accident. He had a concussion and didn’t call for help and she died. Although to be fair, the medical report said she would have died anyway.” Even now, she was trying to be kind to Finn. Robert Bartlett considered it a bad sign. She was still in love with him, and hadn’t fully assimilated the new information she’d gotten. It was too shocking, and hard for her to accept. “He got a suspended prison sentence for manslaughter and five years’ probation for killing the other driver,” she went on. “And there are some other minor upsetting stories. His wife’s parents think he was responsible for her death and wanted her money. He tried to get it, and what she left their son. And now he’s after my money. Indirectly, he has been responsible for the death of two women. His wife’s death in the car accident and the earlier suicide. He has lied to me about everything. I just don’t know what to believe about him anymore.” Her voice shook on the last words. Robert Bartlett would have been stunned by what she had just said to him, except that he had heard it before, and it was the nature of a sociopath and his victim. The confusing evidence and contradiction between their calculating viciousness and their extreme attention, kindness, and seduction paralyzed their victims, who wanted to believe that the good parts were true and the bad ones only a mistake. But with more and more evidence, it became harder to believe. He could tell that Hope was at that stage. She was waking up and starting to see Finn for what he was, but, understandably, didn’t want to believe it. It was hard to accept all of that about someone you loved, and who had been so loving at one time.

“I don’t want you to be his next victim,” Robert said in a sobering tone. She already was in many ways, but he was seriously afraid that if she crossed him in some serious way, or became useless to him, Finn might kill her, drive her to suicide, or cause an accident to happen.

“Neither do I. That’s why I called you,” Hope said in a heartbroken voice.

“You know, what you saw in the beginning, when he was so wonderful to you, is called ‘mirroring,’ when a sociopath will ‘mirror’ back to you everything you need and want and want them to be. And then later, much later, the truth of who they are comes out,” Robert told her. “What do you think you want to do, Hope?” he asked her then gently. He felt deeply sorry for her, and understood better than most people how hard it was to face this kind of thing and take action.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” she admitted. “I know that sounds crazy. It was so wonderful for nine months, and suddenly all this awful stuff is happening. No one had ever been as nice to me, or as loving. I just want it to go back to the way it was in the beginning.” But she was trying to raise the Titanic, and she was beginning to see it. She just didn’t want to believe it. Not yet. She wanted Finn to prove all of it wrong. She wished she’d never gotten the report and still believed the dream. She wanted to but didn’t. But she felt she had to go back and see for sure. Anyone listening to her would have thought she was insane, except Robert Bartlett. She had been lucky to find him.

“That’s not going to happen, Hope,” he said gently. “The man you saw in the beginning and fell in love with doesn’t exist. The real one is a monster, without a heart or a conscience. I could be wrong, of course, and he could just be a very troubled guy, but I think we both know what we’re seeing. That man in the beginning was an act he put on for you. That act is over. This is the third act, where the villain goes in for the kill.” It was the theme of everything Finn wrote. “You can go back and take another look to be sure, no one can stop you, but you could be putting yourself at risk. Maybe great risk. If you do go back, you’ve got to be ready to get out fast, and run like hell if you smell danger. You can’t stick around to negotiate with him. I don’t usually tell people this, but I’ve been there. I was married to an Irish girl, the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and the sweetest. I believed every word she told me, and her story sounds a lot like Finn’s. She had a miserable childhood, her parents were both drunks, and she wound up in foster homes where people did awful things to her. She had the face of an angel and the heart of a devil. I defended her on manslaughter charges a few years after I got out of law school. I had absolutely no doubt of her innocence then. She killed her boyfriend and claimed he tried to rape her, and there was evidence to support it. I believed her. I got her off, but today I wouldn’t tell you the same thing. Eventually, she left me, took every penny I had, broke my heart, and took our kids with her. I married her right after I defended her.

“Eventually she tried to kill me. She came back during the night and stabbed me, and tried to make it look like an intruder, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was her. And I still went back to her two more times, trying to make it work, ignoring everything I knew. I loved her, I was addicted to her, and all I wanted to do was save our marriage and keep my kids. She eventually kidnapped them to Ireland seven years ago, and by some miracle they needed someone to head up the Dublin office at the time, so I jumped at it, to be close to my kids. I couldn’t force her to come back to the States. She’s very clever, and thank God, my kids are okay. The youngest one just left for college in the States two months ago, and I’m going back to the New York office this spring. Nuala has married two men since me, both for money, and one of them died two years ago, from a medication he was violently allergic to, which she administered to him, and convinced the judge at the inquest that she didn’t. She inherited all his money. And she’s going to do it to the man she’s currently married to or some other guy one of these days. She has absolutely no conscience. She belongs in prison, but I don’t know if she’ll ever get there. She is so profoundly disturbed that she is willing to cross any line and has a deep need to get back at the world for what was done to her. No one is safe from her.

“So I know what you’re dealing with here, and I think I know how you feel. It took me years to understand that the good Nuala was only an act she put on for me, but it was so goddamn convincing that I always believed her, no matter what lies she told me or what awful things she did. The kids eventually moved in with me, which didn’t bother her. People like that don’t make terrific parents. Their children are either accessories to their crimes, or their victims. She doesn’t even see my girls now, and I don’t think she cares. She’s busy spending her late husband’s money, the guy she killed by giving him the wrong antibiotic out of the medicine chest. It stopped his heart cold as she knew it would, and she waited an hour to call the paramedics because she ‘was so upset’ and claimed she was sound asleep and didn’t hear him dying. And they believed her. No one has ever cried as hard as she did at the investigation. She was inconsolable. She married her defense attorney, again, and one of these days, she’ll do the same thing to him or someone else. But every man she’s ever left, except the dead ones, have mourned her. And so did I.

“It took me years to get over her, give up on her, and not give a damn anymore. Until then, I went back a hundred times for more. So, I get it. If you still need to turn the boat around, no matter what the evidence, no one can stop you. You have what you saw for nine months, and felt for him, and then you have that investigator’s report and what everyone who knows him, and has experienced him, said. But if you go back, Hope, be smart. With people like that, when he turns on you, all you have time to do is run. That’s the best advice I can give you. If you go back to him for another round, wear your track shoes, listen closely, trust your instincts, and if something happens that worries you or scares the shit out of you, trust yourself and get the hell out. Fast. Don’t wait to pack a suitcase.” It was the best advice he could have given her, based on his own experience, and she was stunned. It was a terrifying story. But so was Finn’s.