Chapter 10: Harbor Point

Juno's POV

Ronan woke at six on Wednesday and read his phone by the window with his back to me.

I lay still and watched him. He read the screen twice. When he turned around, his face gave me nothing.

"Hearing's Friday," he said. "Get some sleep."

He made one call while he buttoned his shirt. He kept his voice low, and I heard every word.

"Paul. Ronan Sayer. Your site ran a story at eleven last night about a woman at the Marlowe." A pause. "No, I know you didn't write it. You published it. Your office is on the sixth floor of a building on Bond Street, and your lease comes up in March. I'm the man who signs it." Another pause. "By seven. Thanks, Paul."

He dressed without another word, picked his jacket off the floor, and left. He didn't mention Marcus's text. Neither did I.

The moment the door shut, I locked myself in the bathroom, ran the shower, and called Dee.

"They found Northline," I whispered.

She was quiet. "The name, or you?"

"The name."

"Then breathe. Northline is behind my firm and two company filings in Delaware. It'll take them weeks to dig through that."

"Weeks isn't forever."

"No, it isn't. So win your hearing fast."

At seven I checked the gossip site, sitting on the bathroom floor with the shower still running. The story about the police at the Marlowe was gone. The link opened a blank white page that said only: Not found.

For two days, Ronan and I were very polite to each other.

We worked in the box from seven in the morning until ten at night. He called me J in front of the staff and nothing at all when we were alone. We didn't touch. On Thursday afternoon, we sent the city Sayer's final offer with the union crew named on the first page.

Marcus watched me the whole time. On the second day I caught him reading my notebook upside down across the table. My stomach turned over before I remembered every word on the page was shorthand. I closed it anyway and smiled at him. He didn't smile back.

On Friday morning a cold wind came down Centre Street with a fine rain that stung my face.

The Harbor Point hearing was held in a wood-paneled room inside the courthouse. Reporters crowded the stone steps shouting at everyone who went in. Inside, the room smelled of wet coats and old radiators.

Five city officials sat at a long raised table. Below them, two tables faced each other across the aisle. Ellison Group on the left. Sayer Capital on the right. Every bench behind us was full.

Grant sat between two lawyers in a navy suit. The scrape on the back of his hand had become a dark scab. His collar sat high, hiding the bruise from Ronan's forearm. His left wrist was bare.

Behind him in the front row sat Margaret, in her pearls, gloves folded in her lap, and Sloane. Sloane whispered something to her, and they both turned to me and smiled.

They had come to watch me lose.

I thought of the police complaint with Sloane's name at the bottom. I made myself smile back.

A man from the planning office stood to let me through at the end of the aisle and forgot to sit back down.

"Ma'am," he said. "Are you with Sayer?"

"Today I am."

Ronan's hand settled on the small of my back. "She's with me," he said pleasantly, and the man sat down fast.

Grant had turned in his seat. For the first time in two years he looked at me properly. The cream suit Dee had made me buy. My hair, cut to my shoulders. My left hand, bare. His eyes went to Ronan's hand on my back and stayed there. His jaw worked.

Then his lawyer touched his sleeve, and he faced front.

I sat beside Ronan and opened my notebook. Before I had decided anything, my hand wrote along the top of the page: Read the fine print.

My stomach dropped. I couldn't tear the page out with Grant twenty feet away. The sound alone would make him look. I put my thumb over the words and left it there.

Behind me, the whispers started.

"That's the wife."

"Ex-wife, I heard."

"Sitting with Sayer? Is she insane?"

Ronan leaned toward me without turning his head. "Ignore them."

"I've been whispered about by better people."

He almost smiled.

The panel head was a woman in her sixties with silver hair and reading glasses on a chain. She banged a small wooden hammer once, and the room went quiet.

Ellison Group went first.

Grant stood and spoke for twenty minutes without a note. Glass towers. Three thousand new jobs. The Ellison name on the skyline for sixty years. He was smooth and calm and very good. I had written half those lines three years ago for a different project, and he still delivered them well.

When he sat, somebody in the back clapped. The panel head gave them a look, and the clapping stopped.

Then Ronan stood.

He didn't speak for twenty minutes. He spoke for six. Sayer would build Harbor Point on time and on budget, with a union crew from Queens, and anyone who wanted the numbers could find them on page two. He didn't smile once.

I turned to a clean page at the back, wrote Now. Rule 6. on it, tore it out, and slid it along the table. Ronan read it in a second and laid his hand flat on top.

Across the aisle, Grant watched that scrap of paper go from my hand to his.

"One more thing," Ronan said, just before he sat. "Rule six. Page forty-one of the city's own rules."

The panel head looked at him over her glasses, opened a thick binder, and turned pages. The room was so quiet that I heard every one.

"Rule six," she read aloud. "Any project on public land must be built by local union builders." She looked across the aisle. "Mr. Ellison. Who is named as the builder in your final offer?"

One of Grant's lawyers stood. "Pike Brothers, Madam Chair."

"Are Pike Brothers a union builder?"

The lawyer looked down at his papers. He turned one page, then another. Grant didn't move beside him.

"Pike Brothers could bring in a union crew."

"Final offers were due yesterday at five o'clock. Your offer names Pike Brothers, and Pike Brothers are not union. That means your offer does not meet rule six, and the city cannot accept it."

Nobody in the room said a word.

The five officials leaned together and murmured for less than a minute.

"The panel votes five to zero," the chair said. "Harbor Point goes to Sayer Capital."

In the front row, Margaret stood first. She didn't look at her son. She walked the center aisle with her chin high and her heels loud on the wood, and she left her gloves behind on the bench. Every reporter in the room watched her go.

The hammer banged. The room exploded. Reporters shoved for the aisle with their phones up. "Holy shit," somebody said behind me. On the left, Grant's lawyers began stuffing papers into briefcases.

Grant didn't move. He sat with his hands flat on the table and stared at the wood.

Sloane followed her mother out. For one second, her smile dropped off her face. She put it back at once, but her hand stayed locked on the strap of her handbag.

Under our table, Ronan's knee pressed against mine, hard.

"Two minutes on Monday," he said quietly. "That's what won this."

"A little under."

The steps outside were chaos. The reporters had umbrellas, cameras and no manners.

"Mr. Sayer! How does it feel to beat Ellison?"

"Mrs. Ellison! Did you steal your husband's files?"

Before I could answer, Sloane stepped out of the crowd beside me. She smiled for the cameras and leaned in to my ear.

"Enjoy it while it lasts, darling."

I turned so the nearest microphone sat between us.

"I will," I said, loud and clear. "And tell your mother she left her gloves on the bench. She was in such a hurry to leave."

Somebody in the crowd laughed. Sloane kept smiling. Her eyes didn't.

Ronan put a hand on my back and steered me down toward a black car at the curb. I held my notebook against my chest to keep the rain off.

Someone stepped in front of me on the last step.

Grant. His hair was wet, and for once it was out of place.

"Juno."

"Move, Grant."

"What did you hand him in there?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He pulled the notebook out of my hands before I could tighten my grip. It fell open to the page I had covered with my thumb all morning.

Ronan stepped forward. I put my arm out to stop him.

At the top of the page, in my handwriting, four words.

Read the fine print.

Grant stared at them. Rain spotted the paper and made the ink run.

He raised his eyes to my face.

"You used to say this," he said. "At breakfast."