CHAPTER SIXTEEN — Margaret Calls

LENA'S POV

My phone rang at seven in the morning.

I was still in bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake, in that foggy place between the two where everything feels slightly unreal. I reached for the phone without looking at the screen and pressed it to my ear.

"Lena."

I was awake immediately.

Margaret's voice had not changed. Still that particular sharpness, like every word had been ironed before she said it. But underneath the sharpness was something I had never heard from her before.

She sounded frightened.

I sat up slowly. "How did you get this number."

"It does not matter," she said. "I need to talk to you."

"You sold me to a seventy two year old man," I said. "I do not think we have anything to talk about."

"Lena." A pause. Something that in anyone else I would have called a tremor. "Edmund is more dangerous than you know. More dangerous than I knew when I agreed to his arrangement. I made a terrible mistake and I am trying to correct it."

I got out of bed and walked to the window and looked out at the compound in the early morning light. Two men at the gate. The ordinary sounds of the place starting its day.

"What kind of mistake," I said carefully.

"The kind that cannot be undone easily," she said. "But perhaps the kind that can be balanced against. I have documents Lena. Things Edmund gave me access to that he should not have. Records of other women. Financial transactions that would be very damaging to him publicly and legally."

I was quiet for a moment.

"Why are you telling me this," I said. "Why now."

"Because I saw the article yesterday," she said. "Edmund's people putting your face everywhere and calling you unstable. I know what that is. I know what he does with women who refuse him." Her voice tightened. "I will not be part of that. Not anymore."

I stood at the window and looked at the gate and thought carefully.

"I need to talk to someone," I said.

"I thought you would," Margaret said. "I will wait."

I put the phone face down and went to find Ghost.

He was in his office.

He looked up when I pushed the door open and something in my expression made him put down whatever he was reading immediately.

"Margaret is on my phone," I said. "She says she has documents. Evidence against Edmund. Records of other women and financial transactions." I held his gaze. "She says she wants to correct a mistake."

Ghost was quiet for a moment. Then he said "bring me the phone."

I brought him the phone.

He looked at the screen where Margaret's name sat waiting. Then he looked at me. "You want to hear what she has to say."

"I want to know if she is telling the truth," I said. "I want to know if what she has is real."

"And if it is."

"Then it could help," I said. "You know it could."

He picked up the phone and handed it back to me. "Put her on speaker," he said. "And sit down."

I sat across from him and put the phone on the desk between us and took Margaret off hold.

"You are on speaker," I said. "Ghost is here."

A brief pause. "I expected as much," Margaret said.

"Tell him what you told me," I said.

Margaret told him. All of it. The documents Edmund had given her access to during the years she had been involved in his arrangements. The names of other women. The financial records showing payments made to families, to officials, to people who were supposed to protect those women and had instead looked the other way. She spoke for ten minutes without stopping and Ghost listened without interrupting and his expression gave nothing away but his eyes did what they always did when he was filing information away somewhere it would be used precisely and at exactly the right moment.

When she finished Ghost said "why now."

"I told your girl already," Margaret said. "The article. Seeing Edmund use his money and his reach to paint her as unstable when she is the sanest person in this entire situation." A pause. "I was not a good mother to her. I will not pretend otherwise. But I will not be his instrument anymore."

Ghost looked at me across the desk.

I looked back at him.

"We want to meet," Ghost said. "In person. Controlled location. You bring everything you have and nothing else."

"Agreed," Margaret said without hesitation.

Ghost ended the call.

The office was quiet for a moment.

"Do you believe her," I said.

"I believe she is scared," Ghost said. "Scared people tell the truth more often than comfortable ones." He looked at me steadily. "Do you believe her."

I thought about Margaret's voice on the phone. The tremor underneath the sharpness that I had never heard before in twenty two years of knowing her. "I believe she is trying to do something right," I said. "Whether it is too late for that to matter to me personally I have not decided yet."

Ghost nodded. "Fair," he said.

"Ghost," I said.

He looked at me.

"If her documents are real," I said. "If she actually has what she says she has. This changes things for us."

"Yes," he said.

"It gives us something to fight back with that is not just defensive," I said. "Something that goes after Edmund instead of just protecting against him."

"Yes," he said again.

I sat back in the chair and looked at the phone on his desk and thought about Margaret frightened on the other end of it. Margaret who had slapped me in a dressing room and told me to smile and handed me over to Edmund Hale without blinking.

Margaret who was apparently drawing a line somewhere after all.

It was late. It was not enough. It did not fix anything between us.

But it might fix something else entirely.

"Set up the meeting," I said.

Ghost looked at me for a moment with something in his expression that was close to pride. "Already planning it," he said.

He picked up his phone and started making calls.

I sat across from him and listened and thought about Margaret's documents and Edmund's article and my face on a news website and the note in my pocket that said I would have anyway.

The story was not finished.

It was only just starting to turn.