Chapter 9: The Waiting

Liam

The clock on my wall has not moved in an hour or maybe it has. Maybe time has stopped altogether, frozen in the moment Zoe walked out the door with a lie on her lips and a secret in her pocket. I need some air, she said. I will be back in an hour. That was two hours ago. Marcus is outside the café. He texted me twenty minutes ago: She met someone. An older woman. They talked for five minutes. She left with something in her hand.

I did not ask what. I am afraid of the answer. The city sprawls beneath my window, a wound of glass and steel. The sun is high, but the light feels false – a gold paint slapped over a rotting wall. I press my palm against the cold glass and watch my breath fog the surface. Tick-tock, the sound is in my head, not a clock but a warning. I call Marcus again.

"Describe the woman." "Gray hair. Sixties. Dressed in black. She walked with a limp." "A limp?" "Left leg. Old injury. She moved like someone who has been running for a long time." I close my eyes. A face surfaces from the fog of memory. Eleanor. My father's secretary. The woman who disappeared the night he died. The woman everyone assumed was dead.

"Did Zoe see you?" "No. I stayed in the car. But I saw her face when she came out." Marcus pauses. "She was pale. Shaking. She put something in her pocket." "A flash drive?" "Could be. She kept her hand over it the whole walk back." I hung up. The phone is hot against my ear. I want to throw it against the wall. I want to drive to the café and find Eleanor myself. I want to shake Zoe until she tells me the truth.

But I wait. Because waiting is what I do. Waiting is what my father taught me. Patience is a blade, he used to say. You sharpen it in silence, and you strike when the enemy sleeps. The enemy is not sleeping. The enemy is everywhere.

The door opens at noon. Zoe walks in, and I see it immediately – the crack in her armor, the fissure behind her grey eyes. She is holding herself too straight, walking too carefully, like someone who is afraid of breaking. "You were gone for two hours," I say. "Traffic." "Marcus said you met someone." She stops. Her hand drifts to her pocket. A reflex. A tell. "An old woman," she says. "She mistook me for someone else."

"And what did she give you?" "Nothing. She was confused. I left." The lie sits between us like a third person in the room. I can taste it – metallic, bitter, the same flavor as her first lies, the ones she told when she walked into my office wearing a dead woman's name. "Zoe." "Liam, I am tired." She walks toward the bedroom. "I need to sleep." She disappears into the shadows of the hallway, and I am left standing alone in the living room, my hands empty, my chest hollow.

I do not follow her. I pour whiskey and sit on the couch, staring at the wall. The flash drive Eleanor gave her is burning a hole in my imagination. What is on it? Evidence? A trap? A confession? I think about my father. About the night he died. About the phone call I received at 3 AM, the voice on the other end telling me to come to the morgue, to identify the body, to sign the papers.

Your father was a good man, the detective said. But he made enemies. The word is a blanket that covers everything. Evelyn. Victor. The faceless men at the top of the file. And now Eleanor – a ghost risen from the grave, carrying secrets in her wrinkled hands.

I finish the whiskey and pour another.

The clock ticks. She comes out of the bedroom at dusk. Her hair is wet. She has showered. She is wearing my shirt again – the white one, the one that falls to her thighs. She stands in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes red.

"I am sorry," she says. "For what?" "For lying. For not telling you about the woman." I set the glass down. "Who was she?" "Eleanor. Your father's secretary." Zoe walks toward me, her bare feet silent on the floor. "She gave me a flash drive. She said it is the real file. The one Victor did not have. The names of the people at the top."

My heart stops. "Where is it?" She pulls it from her pocket and holds it out. Her hand is shaking. "I did not look at it," she says. "I wanted to. But I was afraid." "Afraid of what?" "Afraid that if I opened it, I would lose you." The words land like stones dropped into still water. Ripples.

I take the drive from her hand. It is small, black, unmarked. The same as the one Victor gave me. The same as the one Evelyn wanted. But this one feels heavier. This one feels like a grave. "Liam." Zoe touches my arm. "Whatever is on it, we face it together."

I look at her – at the woman who was sent to destroy me, who became my ally, who became something I do not have words for. "Together," I say.I plug the drive into my laptop. The files opened, names, dates and transactions the same as before, but deeper, darker, reaching higher. I scroll through page after page, my stomach tightening with each new revelation.

And then I see it. A photograph. My mother. Standing next to a man I do not recognize. Her hand is on his arm. She is smiling. The caption beneath reads: Eleanor Park, aka Margaret Vance. Location: Unknown. Status: Alive.

My blood turns to ice. "Zoe," I say. "Look at this." She leans over my shoulder. Her breath catches. "That is my mother," she whispers. "But her name is Margaret. Not Eleanor." I zoom in on the photograph. The woman's eyes are grey – the same grey as Zoe's. The same grey as the woman I have been sleeping beside.

"Zoe." My voice is barely a whisper. "Your mother. What is her real name?"

She does not answer. The clock ticks.

And somewhere in the shadows of the city, another player is waiting. Tick-tock and the game has just become personal.