Lies He Told Me

As the alarm sounds, Marcie sits in a bathroom stall, holding her duffel bags. She leaves the door slightly ajar, and her legs are raised out of view. When a guard checks the bathroom, he does not see her. Marcie leaves the bank via the emergency exit and runs.

Agent Blair learns that someone called in an anonymous bomb threat. He enters the bank’s private viewing room and sees the five empty safe deposit boxes. Picking up a note on the floor, he reads six words. Blair orders a trace on Marcie’s cell phone. He then takes a call from Tommy, aka Silas Renfrow. Blair assures Silas they will find Marcie.

Blair tells Silas to search the neighborhood but not to kill Marcie, as she will freely hand over the money to protect her children. Silas does not respond.

Marcie keeps her phone switched off to avoid being traced. Leaving the duffel bags in a park gazebo, she runs to a sportswear shop, buying a hat, sunglasses, and a sweatshirt to disguise her identity. She also purchases a Swiss Army knife. Renting a car, she calls Camille on David’s phone, telling her to run with the children.

Marcie drives to an internet café. Playing the audio file on David’s thumb drive, she recognizes one of the men’s voices.

Agent Blair guesses that Marcie will collect her children from the hospital before she goes on the run with the money. He calls Kyle, asking for his help. Kyle asserts that he will only assist Blair if he is completely transparent about his intentions. Blair looks at the note David left in the safe deposit box, which reads, “Don’t trust anyone from the FBI” (324). He tells Kyle that if he does not intercept Marcie’s children at the hospital, he will be endangering lives and his own career.

Marcie tries to access her email but cannot remember her password. She briefly switches on her phone to reset the password.

Blair traces Marcie’s location from her phone and tells Silas she is nearby. Meanwhile, Kyle calls to confirm he intercepted Camille and the children and is keeping them in protective custody at the police station.

As Marcie sends an email with the audio file from the thumb drive attached, a man enters the internet café. Marcie recognizes Silas and runs for the rear exit.

Silas follows Marcie into an alley. As he draws his gun, Marcie creeps up on Silas, stabbing him in the cheek and hand.

Marcie grabs Silas’s gun as he falls to the ground. She kicks him repeatedly and points the gun at him, recalling how he killed David. When a voice shouts her name, Marcie realizes Agent Blair is speaking from Silas’s phone. Blair tells Marcie that they can still work together. However, Marcie is sure that, once they have the money, Silas and Blair will kill her.

Leaving Silas incapacitated, Marcie retrieves the duffel bags from the gazebo. As she drives toward a superstore, she notes no police presence, proving that Blair is not part of an official FBI investigation. Marcie buys 24 life jackets, four pairs of toy handcuffs, and 150 reams of paper from the store.

As Marcie drives to Hemingway Grove, she calls Kyle on David’s phone, telling him to check his email. Arriving at Anna’s Bridge, she ignores the signs warning that the structure is closed and unsafe. Marcie stops the car in the middle of the bridge, where a section of the road and the guardrail are missing. Taking the duffel bags and the handcuffs from the car, she calls Blair using her own phone, telling him to come and get her.

Agent Blair traces Marcie’s location to Anna’s Bridge. He instructs Silas to approach her from one side of the bridge, and he will take the other, trapping Marcie.

As Agent Blair approaches, he sees Marcie standing by the hole in the bridge with 11 duffel bags lined up beside her. He calls her, and Marcie explains that she cannot be imprisoned for money she no longer has. One by one, she begins pushing the duffel bags off the bridge into the fast-flowing river below.

Marcie sees Silas and Agent Blair approaching in vehicles on both sides of the bridge. She realizes that only Blair can reach her due to the hole in the road. Marcie warns that if Blair shoots her, she and the rest of the money will go into the river. Blair realizes that Marcie has handcuffed herself to the four remaining duffel bags.

As police sirens draw near, Agent Blair shoots Silas dead, stating that he will tell the police he saved Marcie’s life. He suggests they can both emerge from the situation as “heroes” and split the remaining money, pointing out that no one will believe Marcie if she contradicts his story. Marcie plays the audio file on her speakerphone. In the recorded conversation, Blair agrees to disclose the location of a witness detention center in exchange for $20 million from Cagnina. David took the thumb drive when he stole Cagnina’s money but did not know the identity of the FBI officer. Marcie reveals that she has already sent a copy to the police.

As police cars pull up at the bridge, Blair lunges at Marcie, kicking a duffel bag off the bridge. Marcie falls into the water, chained to the bags.

Marcie sees light above the water’s surface and feels desperate to see her children again. However, she cannot breathe and lacks the strength to swim. She is saved by Kyle, who holds onto a helicopter ladder until the police raft rescues them both. Marcie realizes that her plan worked. The lifejackets in the duffel bags stopped her from drowning.

As they are treated by paramedics at the riverside, Kyle reveals that Blair effectively died by suicide. Surrounded by police officers, he pointed his gun at them, forcing them to shoot. When Marcie expresses relief at surviving, Kyle suggests that perhaps she didn’t.

Marcie was declared “dead from complications” (364) after falling into the Cotton River. She and the children have relocated to an undisclosed location by a lake, the kind of place Marcie and David dreamed of retiring to. Marcie does not fear Cagnina’s retribution as he has retired and knew nothing about Silas and Blair’s scheme.

Kyle visits Marcie and the children, revealing that Camille had a baby girl and has resolved to raise the child alone. He also notes that a buyer is interested in Hemingway’s Pub. Marcie reflects that before the sale goes through, she must retrieve the money David concealed inside the base of the Hemingway statue. She now knows that the remote from the safe-deposit box opens the statue’s secret compartment. Marcie plans to donate significant sums to charity, pay for the children’s college education, and take a proportion of the money herself as “hazard pay.” Kyle notes that, although he has never wanted to leave Hemingway Grove, he can imagine himself living in the idyllic lakeside location.