Chapter 7: Downstairs

Juno's POV

It was half past ten on Tuesday morning, and for a second nobody in the box moved.

Ronan straightened up behind my chair. "He's here? In my building?"

"Just inside the front door." Marcus held up his phone. "He's got a photo of a woman walking in here yesterday morning. Gray suit, black bag, hair pinned up." He looked at me. "It's you, J. He says he isn't leaving without you."

Ronan turned his head and looked down at me. He didn't ask. Grant Ellison was downstairs asking for his wife, and the woman in the photo was sitting right in front of him.

I set my pen on the notebook. My hands were steady. I made sure of it.

"I'll handle it."

"Like hell you will." Ronan was already at the door.

I went after him. Marcus pressed his back against the glass to let us pass. The metal stairs rang under our feet all the way down.

The whole deal floor was watching the front door. Nobody pretended to work. A few people had phones out under their desks, and a low whisper ran from desk to desk. It died the second they saw me on the stairs.

Owen stood by the black steel door with a closed umbrella. Water dripped from the tip into a small dark puddle on the boards.

Grant stood a few steps in front of him, in a charcoal coat, every hair in place. He was looking around the brick room as if he'd stepped in something.

Then he saw me on the stairs.

"Juno. Get your coat."

I stopped on the bottom step. "Why would I do that?"

"Because we're leaving."

"There's no 'we.' You made sure of that on Friday."

Two analysts by the window put their heads together.

Grant crossed the floor. His shoes were loud on the old boards. Ronan stepped off the stairs and stood a little to my left and said nothing yet. He was bigger than Grant, and both of them knew it.

"Ronan Sayer," Grant said, without looking at him. "I should have known you were behind this."

"Behind what? She walked in the front door and so did you. The difference is she was invited."

Grant kept his eyes on me. "Do you understand how this looks? We sign papers on Friday and on Monday my wife walks into his office. My mother has taken four phone calls this morning."

"Ex-wife. Tell your mother I said hello."

Grant didn't blink.

He lowered his voice, but not by much. He wanted the room to hear. In our whole marriage he had never shouted at me. He had never cared enough to. When Grant was angry his voice only got colder.

"What did he promise you?" He looked at my gray suit and my pinned-up hair, then past me at Ronan. "Is this how you pay rent now? On your back?"

Twenty faces turned to me, then to Ronan, then back. I felt every one land on my skin. Behind me, somebody whispered, "Oh my God."

Ronan moved before I could.

He crossed the space in two steps. Grant saw him coming and began to turn, too slowly. Ronan took Grant's coat in both fists and slammed him backward into a brick pillar. Grant's head cracked against the brick. The sound was flat and ugly. A woman at the nearest desk gasped. The gold watch tore off his wrist, hit the boards, and skidded away across the floor.

Ronan shifted his grip and pinned him with a forearm across the collarbone, high enough to press the throat. Grant's heels scraped. His face went dark red.

"Say it again." Ronan's voice was quiet, and that was worse than any shout. "Go on, you gutless son of a bitch. Say it to me."

By the door, Owen took one step forward and stopped.

I was beside them before I knew I had moved. I laid my hand flat on Ronan's arm. His muscle was hard as rope under my palm.

"Don't."

"Give me one reason."

"He wants you to do it. One punch and he has a police report and a photo for every paper in New York. Three days before Harbor Point."

Ronan didn't let go. He stared into Grant's face from six inches away. Grant stared back, choking, clawing at his arm with both hands.

"Ronan," I said.

It was the first time I had said his name out loud.

He let go.

My hand was still on his arm. I could feel it shaking. Nobody had ever fought for me. I didn't know what to do with it.

Grant stumbled off the pillar, coughing, and yanked his coat straight. A red band showed across his neck where the forearm had been. Blood beaded on the back of his hand where the brick had scraped it raw. He touched the back of his head. His fingers came away clean, but they shook.

He looked down at his bare wrist. His father's watch lay somewhere on the floor of Ronan's building, and he could not get on his knees in front of these people to look for it.

I walked up and stopped a foot away. I kept my voice low, so only Grant could hear, and Ronan, who still stood close enough to touch us both.

"You lost Brooks because you didn't read page nine."

His face didn't change at first. When it did, he looked sick.

I watched him work it through. The news had said only that he lost, not why. The people who knew about page nine were his lawyers, the Brooks family, a boardroom that would never tell me anything, and one adviser he had emailed the contract to on Sunday night.

"How do you know that?" His voice came out rough.

"Goodbye, Grant."

I turned my back on him. It was the easiest thing I had done all week.

Owen picked up the umbrella and held the steel door. Grant stood there a moment longer, looking at the back of my head. I could feel it. Then he walked out into the rain without another word.

Owen glanced back at me once before he followed. His face gave nothing away.

The door banged shut.

For three seconds the floor was silent. Then twenty people whispered at once.

"That was Grant Ellison's wife?"

"Ex-wife. She said ex-wife."

"J. As in Juno. Oh my God, she's Juno Ellison!"

Marcus stood halfway down the metal stairs, one hand on the rail. He looked at me and didn't smile.

"Well. That explains the one letter." Then he raised his voice. "Show's over. Anybody who wants to keep a job, back to it."

Nobody moved very fast.

Ronan hadn't moved from beside the pillar. His forearm was scraped pink where it had ground on the brick, and he didn't seem to notice. He bent, picked up the gold watch, and turned it over. Something was engraved on the back, too small for me to read from where I stood. He closed his fist around it.

He looked at me, and I couldn't read his face at all.

"Upstairs. Now."

I followed him up the metal stairs. My legs had started to shake, but only now, where nobody could see.

In the box, he waited until I was inside. He shut the door and pulled down the blinds one after another until the glass walls turned white and the floor below disappeared.

He dropped the watch on the table beside my notebook and turned to face me.

"How the hell," he said, "did you know about page nine?"