Chapter 8: Knock

Juno's POV

I had about one second to decide what kind of liar to be.

"Ledger told me."

Ronan didn't blink. "Ledger told you."

"Ledger worked for Grant for years. On Sunday night, Grant sent them the Brooks contract and begged them to come back." All of that was true. "They read it and emailed me what was on page nine."

"And didn't warn him."

"They'd already quit."

Ronan walked slowly around the table, the way he had on Monday. With the blinds down the light in the box was gray and flat. Through the floor I could hear the deal floor still whispering.

"You're married to Grant Ellison."

"I'm divorcing him."

"Since when?"

I lifted my chin. "Since about eight o'clock on Friday night."

He stopped. I watched him do the math.

"You were in that bar by nine."

"About then."

"So you signed your divorce papers, walked ten blocks in the rain, and came upstairs with me." He watched my face. "Did you know who I was?"

"No."

"Did Ledger send you to that bar?"

"Nobody sent me. I didn't know I was going until I walked in."

"How did you get this job?"

"An email. Two years ago, out of nowhere, offering me more money than I'd ever earned." I kept my eyes on his. "I've never seen their face. I've never heard their voice. Everything comes by email. I'm paid by transfer from a company I was told never to name out loud, and if I break one of those rules, the work stops and I never hear from them again."

"That didn't strike you as strange?"

"Every day for two years. It struck me all the way to the bank."

"And the night Ledger quits your husband, Ledger's assistant ends up in my bed." He picked Grant's watch off the table and turned it in his fingers. "Here's my problem, J. Or Juno, or whatever the fuck you're called today. You're either the best thing that's walked into this company in three years, or the worst. And I can't tell which."

"Then watch me work. You'll find out."

He didn't answer right away.

"Take the afternoon."

"The hearing is Friday."

"I know when the hearing is. Go home. I need to think, and I can't think with you in the room."

I didn't know what to do with that, so I picked up my notebook and my bag.

At the door he asked, "Where are you staying?"

"The Marlowe. Room 902."

"Of course you are." His eyes stayed on the watch.

Room 902 was a quarter the size of Suite 1407. A bed, a desk, one armchair by the window, a view of the brick wall across the street. The heater ticked and clanked.

At ten that night I sat cross-legged on the bed in sweatpants with a plate of cold room-service fries and the Harbor Point pages spread around me. My bag sat on the armchair, the top open, one silver corner of the laptop showing.

Someone knocked. Three times, hard.

Nobody knocks like that at a hotel. I put down the plate and went to the peephole.

Two police officers stood in the hall, a man and a woman. The woman held a folded sheet of paper.

"NYPD," she called. "Juno Ellison? We need to speak with you."

My heart pounded so hard I felt it in my throat. I set the chain and opened the door four inches.

"Yes?"

"Ma'am, we're following up on a complaint from Ellison Group." She glanced at her paper. "Company files were taken, along with a laptop. A silver laptop."

I didn't look back at the armchair. I kept my eyes on her face and didn't let them move.

"Can we come in and take a quick look?" the man asked. He was already trying to see past me.

I stepped sideways so my body filled the gap. "Do you have a warrant?"

"We just want to talk, ma'am."

"Then you can talk from there."

I took my phone from my sweatpants and called Dee on video. She answered on the second ring in a satin bonnet and a face mask.

"It's ten o'clock. Why is your face doing that?"

I turned the phone toward the hallway.

Dee peeled off the mask in one pull. "Good evening, officers! Dee Okafor, counsel for Ms. Whitlock. Is my client under arrest?"

The woman sighed. "No, ma'am. It's a complaint. We follow up on complaints."

"Then you've followed up. My client won't be answering questions tonight. Do you have a warrant?"

"We were hoping she'd let us look."

"She won't. A warrant is a judge's signed permission to search. No signature, no search. A hotel room gets the same protection as a home. Stoner versus California, 1964. Look it up in the car."

Farther down the corridor, by the ice machine, someone stood with a phone held up at shoulder height. Black coat. Red lipstick. She was filming my door.

Sloane.

Her voice came down the corridor, bright and unhurried. "A hotel room, Juno? Mother said you'd end up somewhere like this."

My mouth opened. In my ear, Dee said, "One line. Only one."

"You opened that laptop yourself on Friday, Sloane," I said. "Tell the officers what you found."

"Turn me around, Juno," Dee said.

I turned the phone to face down the hall.

Dee raised her voice until it bounced off the walls. "Ms. Sloane Ellison! Hi! Just so everyone on this floor knows, making a false report to the police is a crime in New York. Section 240.50 of the Penal Law. I'd be very careful what you film tonight, because I'm recording too."

Two doors opened. A man in a hotel robe leaned out.

Sloane lowered her phone. The policewoman looked at her, then at the paper in her own hand, and kept looking until Sloane turned and walked to the elevator without a word.

The man in the robe went red. The policewoman almost smiled.

"Have a good night, counselor." She folded her paper into her jacket.

I watched them down the hall until the elevator doors closed. I shut the door, put the chain back on, and leaned my forehead against the wood.

"Juno," Dee said from the phone. "Juno! Look at me."

I looked.

"I'm coming over. Don't open that door for anybody but me."

Dee arrived at twenty to eleven in a long coat over her pajamas, bonnet still on. She walked past me to the armchair and looked down into the bag.

"That damn thing is going to get you fucking killed."

"It's going to get me paid."

"Not if Ellison Group gets its hands on it first."

"Without my passkey it opens to a law student's old desktop. Case briefs. Class notes. That's all anyone sees."

"Anyone who isn't looking hard." She dropped onto the bed and nearly sat on my fries. "How does Ellison Group even know you carry a silver laptop?"

I thought about it. I had carried it to every family dinner since the wedding. I never left it home in case Grant got curious, so it hung on the back of my chair in the same black bag. Grant never looked. Grant never looked at anything of mine.

But on Friday night, Sloane had held it in her hands and opened the lid.

"Sloane noticed," I said slowly.

Dee held up her phone. "I called a desk sergeant who owes me a very big favor. He sent me a photo of the complaint."

"Dee, that can't be legal."

"He shouldn't have sent it, so don't repeat that to anybody. Read it."

I took the phone. The photo was blurred at the edges, but the middle was clear. A police form. A complaint number. The words company property and silver laptop computer.

At the bottom, a line in capitals. I zoomed in.

COMPLAINT MADE BY: SLOANE ELLISON.