Chapter 81: What Needs Doing

Dante.I called the doctor first.It was the first call that needed making and I'd learned a long time ago that the first minutes after something like this were the minutes that determined everything that came after. You made the calls that needed making or you stood in a doorway and let the situation make them for you.I didn't stand in doorways.The doctor answered on the third ring, voice thick with sleep, and I told him what I needed in two sentences. He asked one question. I answered it. He said he'd make the arrangements and be there within the hour and I ended the call.Victor came up behind me."Gerald," I said."Nothing yet.""How long has it been?""He left his building at eleven. That house is ninety minutes out." Victor's voice had the quality it got when he was delivering information he'd already processed. "He should have arrived by one at the latest. It's nearly four.""So he arrived and something happened.""Or he didn't arrive.""He was driving himself. No record of t

Chapter 82: The Door

Xena.Five forty-three there was a knock.I closed the laptop, walked to the door and opened it.Dante stood in the hallway in the same jacket he'd been wearing when he left. His eyes came to my face when the door opened and stayed there. There was something in the set of his jaw that hadn't been there the last time I'd seen him — not readable exactly, just present, the way certain things settle into a person's face after a night like the one he'd had."You didn't answer," he said."I know.""I called four times.""I know, Dante."He looked at me for a moment."Can I come in?" he said.I stepped back from the door.He came in and I closed it behind him and he stopped in the middle of Adrian's living room and looked at it the way you look at a space that belongs to someone else when you're trying not to look like you're looking at it. The legal pad on the table. The two laptops. The empty coffee pot. Everything exactly where it had been all night — the evidence of hours of work that ha

Chapter 83: Twelve Hours

Chapter Xena.Adrian was still looking at me.I set the laptop down and stood up."He's here because my father is dead," I said. "And because we have twelve hours before Victor locates Hannah and I'm not spending them alone."Adrian's eyes moved to Dante. Then back to me."You could have called me," he said."You were asleep.""I wasn't asleep."I looked at him. He looked back and then looked at Dante — eyes moving over him the way you look at something you weren't expecting to find in your own living room.Dante hadn't moved from the couch. The legal pad was on his knee with both hands still and eyes on Adrian."Victor found two more documents," I said. "In my father's files. Three total — they name the channel, the original arrangement, everything. We've been going through them."Adrian looked at the table. The laptops. The legal pad. The coffee pot."How long has he been here," he said."An hour.""And you didn't think to—""Adrian." I held his gaze. "My father died tonight in Dant

Chapter 84: Room Four-Twelve

Xena.Axel was waiting by the cars when we came out of the building.He had his keys in his hand and the look of a man who had made a decision and was waiting to see if anyone would argue with it."I'm coming," he said.I looked at him."No," I said."Xena—""I still need space from you, Axel." Not harsh. Just true, the way true things landed when there wasn't time to soften them. "That hasn't changed because we've been in the same room for a week."He held my gaze for a moment. Something working behind his eyes that he kept contained.Then he nodded once and stepped back.I got in the car.Nobody said anything about it. Dante drove. Adrian was in the back seat with his eyes on his phone, running something I hadn't asked about. The city thinned out around us as we hit the highway and I watched it go and thought about a hotel room in Naperville with one occupant who didn't know we were coming.Hannah.I'd been thinking about her in fragments all night — between the documents, between

Chapter 85: Four-Twelve

Hannah.The air conditioning came on every twenty-three minutes.I'd been counting it since Diana left. Not because the number mattered but because counting was something to do with my mind that wasn't the other thing my mind wanted to do, which was go back to the kitchen and the counter and the scratch in the laminate and what Reeves had said standing on the other side of it.The room was small. One bed, one window, curtains I hadn't opened because the window faced the parking lot and I didn't want to see the parking lot. A desk with a chair that was slightly too hard. A bathroom with a light that buzzed when you turned it on. I'd turned it off and left it off.I sat on the floor with my back against the bed.Not the chair, not the bed itself. The floor. Two years of living in houses that weren't mine had taught me that the floor was the one surface in any room that was genuinely neutral. Nobody had chosen the floor. Nobody had arranged it for you. You just sat on it and it held you

Chapter 86: The Lobby

Xena.Hannah didn't cry for long.That was the thing about Hannah — she gave herself exactly as much as the moment required and not a second more. Two minutes with her face against my shoulder. Then she straightened and pulled back, looking at me with her eyes still wet and her jaw set and that was that.She's still Hannah. Two years in those houses and she's still exactly Hannah."We need to go," she said."We do.""Reeves—""We'll get to him." I looked at her face. The red-rimmed eyes, the set jaw, the look of a woman who had already processed what she was