Accueil / Romance / Mine Alone / Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 49

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The fine print

On Monday I went to see Jane at work, because I had been told for the third time that week not to go anywhere alone, and I wanted to see exactly how ridiculous that looked in practice. Bean There was a narrow corner shop with chalkboard menus and mismatched chairs, and it smelled so strongly of roasted coffee that I had to breathe through my mouth at the door. Jane saw me coming from behind the counter, her hair pinned up under the cap, and pointed her chin at a man at the window table who was reading a newspaper with great concentration. "That's Tobias," she said. "Idris sent him. He's been here since seven and he's ordered one muffin, and he hasn't turned a page in forty minutes. I call him Newspaper." "Does he know that?" "He knows I've called him a lot of things." She slid a mug across the counter. "Peppermint. I figured you're still off coffee." I wrapped both hands around it. "How do you know I'm off coffee?" "Evans, you've been walking around like a ghost with gin

Marian’s garden

We left the city on Saturday morning at ten past six, in two cars, through the studio's underground garage. Idris had said that if a dark blue sedan was still waiting outside Isaiah's house, he would rather let it keep waiting. I had spent Friday night at Drake's again, since that was the only way to leave without anyone noticing me go. Jane stayed behind with a mug of tea and strict instructions to text me a photo of her face every hour so I'd know she was alive. She agreed on the condition that I never complained about the angles. Reuben drove us, and Idris's car went ahead of ours, close enough that I could read the back of his head through the glass. Drake sat beside me in the back seat with his arm along the top of the cushion, not quite touching me, which was how I knew he was nervous. He only did that when he wanted to give me room. I was fine for the first hour. Then the road started to curve, and my stomach rolled over like it had that morning with the eggs. "You've g

The Girl in the Silver Dress

I didn't sleep much that night, and by morning I had stopped pretending to try. Jane drove me to the label herself, with Tobias following three cars behind in a beige hatchback that looked like it belonged to a dentist. She parked at the curb, turned off the engine, and said, "If he says one thing that doesn't add up, you walk out of there, and I'll be right here with a bat and a very large coffee." "You don't have the bat with you." "I have a large coffee, which is basically a weapon." She squeezed my hand. "Go." I took the elevator to the fourth floor instead of the office on the top one, because I didn't want to sit across a desk from him for this. Stacy at the front desk looked up when I passed and said, very quietly, "He's been in there since six," and then went back to her typing as if she hadn't spoken. Drake wasn't behind his desk when I walked in. He was sitting on the long sofa by the window in yesterday's shirt with his sleeves rolled up and his tie gone, and on the lo

What My Father Didn't Ask

Tyler's POV Williams called at ten past two in the morning, which meant he had either found something or lost something. In ten years he had never once woken me for the first. I took the call standing at the window with the lights off and a glass of water in my hand instead of whiskey. I had been drinking less since California, and I told myself it was a matter of discipline. "Talk." "We're out of the house, boss." His voice was low and level, the way it always was, but there was a clipped rhythm underneath it that told me he'd been moving fast. "All six of us. The first cars left at nine, the last at ten-fifteen. I wanted you to hear it from me before anyone else got the chance." "Why?" "We were being watched. Since Saturday. A grey sedan at the end of the lane, then a second car on the coast road, a different driver every shift. They weren't hiding it. They wanted us to know they could see us." I set the glass on the sill. "Whose?" "Woods's people. I'd stake my life on it."

The Back Row

By Friday, I had read every word of my new contract three times, and Smith had read it twice, and the lawyer Drake had hired from a firm across town had read it so many times that she began finishing my sentences. She was a calm, grey-haired woman in a navy suit who said "Of course" before I'd even finished asking a question, and I decided within ten minutes that I liked her. Drake sat in the corner of the meeting room the whole time with his arms folded and his mouth shut, which I'm told was an enormous effort. Every so often I caught him looking at the ceiling as if he were praying. "Clause nine," the lawyer said, turning the page. "As amended. Any relocation of the Artist requires the Artist's written agreement, except in the event of an immediate threat to her life, and in that case she must be told the reason within the hour. Are you satisfied with that, Miss Halls?" "What if I'm unconscious?" "Then within the hour of waking," she said, without a flicker. "I did consider it.

Humming

The party after the showcase lasted exactly forty minutes, because Idris cleared the Annex the moment the last artist had bowed, and nobody argued with him. But those forty minutes were the loudest and happiest I'd had in my whole life. Jane lifted me clean off the floor and screamed a sentence into my hair that I never understood, and Smith, who I had never once seen without his notes, held my face in both hands and said, "That is the voice I've been waiting twenty years to hear," and then turned around and walked straight into a stack of chairs. Isaiah shook my hand very formally, then ruined it by hugging me. He smelled of bleach and the aftershave he saved for church, and I held on a little too long. It was in the car park, with engines starting all around us, that Idris came up to Drake and murmured something I wasn't meant to hear. I heard it anyway. "Lost him at the side door, sir. A car was waiting. We have the model, no plate." Drake nodded once. He waited until Idris had

The Red Light

Idris found the warehouse on Tuesday, and by seven that evening I could tell Drake had stopped listening to anything else. I had come up to his office after rehearsal to say goodnight, and instead I found the two of them bent over the desk with a map of Inglewood glowing on the big screen behind them. A brick building with three loading bays, a faded sign that said *Sutter Freight*, a flat roof with two small figures on it, circled in red. Idris was speaking in his usual flat murmur, and Drake was nodding at every sentence in a way I had learned to be wary of. It was the nod of a man who has already made up his mind. "Six men inside," Idris said. "Williams, the one called Joe, four others. They bring food in at eight and eleven. Two on the roof, rotating every three hours. If we go in tonight, we could be there by midnight." "Do it." "No," I said. They both turned. I hadn't meant to say it so loudly, and I hadn't meant to be standing in the middle of the carpet with my bag still

What the Red Light Saw

Drake didn't shout. That was the first thing I noticed, and it frightened me more than shouting would have. He sat down in Marcus's chair in front of the console, pulled the keyboard toward him, and worked in complete silence while I stood behind him in my crumpled blouse with my arms wrapped around myself, trying to stop my teeth from chattering. "The server room lock keeps a record of every card," he said at last, without turning around. "This is tonight." He angled the screen so I could see it. A plain grey table, six lines long. Idris at 6:10. Smith at 6:25, on his way out. And then, at 6:52, a line that read *M. ADEYEMI, ARM/RECORD, BOOTH 1, SCHEDULED UNTIL 23:59.* "Marcus," I said. My voice sounded very far away. "His card, his password." Drake's eyes moved down the screen and stopped. "And there's a sync set for midnight to an address outside the building." I looked at the clock in the corner of the monitor. 11:41. He didn't swear. He typed one long string of lett

Thirty one minutes

Idris met us at the bottom of the hill under a broken streetlamp, leaning against the grey sedan, and he handed Drake a tablet before either of us had properly climbed out. I stood at Drake's elbow with the taste of salt still on my lips and my legs not quite my own. My hair was a mess, my dress was creased from the bonnet, and my face, I knew, was blotchy from crying. Idris stared straight ahead at the horizon with the stony tact of a man who had seen everything twice. "Eleven-forty," he said. "A cream Mercedes goes through the gate. Driver's seat only. She stays thirty-one minutes." The first photo showed the front of the warehouse under an orange light, the loading shutters half raised, a pale car sliding in. The second showed Veronica stepping out in a long dark coat. Between her and the doorway stood a tall man with white hair brushed back and a flat grey suit, one hand extended to take her elbow. I knew him at once. Three years of dinners and doors held open. Williams. "He

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