Chương 6
Nathaniel spent most of the night on the phone in the kitchen. His voice remained low. Once, near three in the morning, he said, “Do not bring him here,” with enough force that Brutus lifted his head.
Wren sat on the floor beside the windows.
The apartment had chairs worth more than her car, but the floor felt safer. Brutus lay beside her, his back against her thigh. Each time she moved, one amber eye opened.
The city across the river continued without them. Windows went dark. A garbage truck stopped beneath a streetlamp. Two people argued near a parked car, their gestures visible though their voices did not carry.
Dahlia emerged around four wearing socks and carrying a blanket.
“Is he asleep?” she whispered.
“Nathaniel?”
“The dog.”
Brutus opened both eyes.
“No.”
Dahlia lowered herself beside Wren. “I’m sorry.”
“You said that.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“You still didn’t know.”
“I should have checked.”
“You searched Nathan Vale.”
“I searched Nathan V. Celeste said he was private.”
Wren looked at her.
“I know,” Dahlia said. “That sounds worse now.”
The blanket pooled over their knees. Dahlia picked at a loose thread.
“I thought you were disappearing,” she said.
Wren turned her head.
“You work, you go home, you send me a thumbs-up when I ask whether you ate. You haven’t come to my place in two months.”
“I came for your birthday.”
“You stayed forty minutes and washed the serving plates.”
“They were piling up.”
“That is exactly what I mean.”
Wren watched the garbage truck move to the next building. “I owe eleven thousand dollars.”
Dahlia stopped picking at the thread.
“Medical debt?”
“Some. Mostly credit cards. Mom’s assisted-living copays before she died. The funeral. Rent during the weeks I wasn’t working.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would have tried to fix it.”
“I could have helped.”
“You have student loans and a bathroom ceiling that leaks.”
“I also have a couch.”
“I have a couch.”
“You have a couch that folds in the middle and tries to eat people.”
“It was free.”
Dahlia leaned her head against Wren’s shoulder. “You make yourself very hard to help.”
“I’m easy to help. I just need eleven thousand dollars and a new life.”
“See? Specific.”
Wren smiled despite herself.
Across the room, Nathaniel ended a call.
He stood in the dim kitchen, sleeves rolled to his forearms, watching them. Without the jacket, he looked less like the man from the news and more dangerous in a different way—tired, perhaps, but incapable of setting the fatigue down.
Dahlia noticed him. “Do you have coffee?”
“Yes.”
“Is it normal coffee or billionaire punishment coffee?”
“I am not a billionaire.”
“That was not the question.”
He opened a cabinet.
The coffeemaker was so complicated that Nathaniel studied it longer than he had studied the armed police officer in the alley.
Dahlia watched him press three buttons unsuccessfully. “This is excellent.”
“I don’t use it.”
“You own an apartment with a machine you can’t operate?”
“It came with the apartment.”
Wren got up.
Nathaniel stepped aside as she examined the machine. The water reservoir was empty.
“You need water,” she said.
“I assumed it had water.”
“That’s how appliances become fires.”
He filled the reservoir.
For several minutes, the most feared man in Providence waited beside a blinking coffee machine while Dahlia gave unhelpful instructions from the floor.
The coffee came out too strong.
They drank it anyway.
At six fourteen, Nathaniel’s phone rang.
He read the screen and answered without greeting.
A man’s voice carried faintly. Nathaniel listened, his expression changing so little that Wren noticed only because she had spent years watching customers decide whether to complain.
“Where?” he asked.
The answer took several seconds.
Nathaniel looked at Brutus.
“No,” he said. “Keep him there.”
He ended the call.
“Gabriel?” Wren asked.
Nathaniel studied her. “He left the safe house.”
“Why?”
“He heard about the restaurant.”
“How?”
“He has a phone.”
“You let him have one?”
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
Wren almost apologized. Then she did not.
“Where did he go?” Dahlia asked.
“To find her apartment.”
Wren stood so quickly her coffee spilled.
Nathaniel was already moving.
The ride to Wren’s neighborhood took twelve minutes.
Nathaniel drove this time, with one bodyguard in the passenger seat and Dahlia squeezed beside Wren in the back. Brutus occupied most of the cargo space but kept his head between the seats.
Morning had begun gray and damp. Delivery trucks blocked narrow streets. People carried coffee into offices. A woman in running clothes waited impatiently while their SUV turned across a crosswalk.
Wren’s phone, returned to her inside a signal-blocking pouch, vibrated repeatedly. Nathaniel refused to let her remove it.
“It could be my manager.”
“It is not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Your manager called six times. Morrow called twice from blocked numbers. Three messages came from a spoofed number using Dahlia’s name.”
Dahlia leaned forward. “What did they say?”
Nathaniel did not answer.
“What did they say?”
He handed her the phone pouch.
Dahlia opened it.
Her face lost color.
Wren took the phone.
The messages appeared under Dahlia’s contact photo.
I got away from them.
Come home alone.
Please Wren I’m scared.
The punctuation was wrong.
Dahlia used too many commas and never called her Wren unless she was angry.
Nathaniel watched the road. “He wants to know whether you are with me.”
“Can he track the phone?”
“Not while it’s in the pouch.”
Wren looked at the first message again. “He doesn’t know Dahlia is with me.”
“Probably not.”
“Then he didn’t see us leave.”
“He may have lost sight of the second vehicle.”
“Or someone told him I left with you but not who else was inside.”
Nathaniel glanced at her in the mirror.
The bodyguard in front shifted slightly.
Wren saw it.
“Who knew the seating arrangement?” she asked.
Nathaniel’s eyes stayed on the road.
“The drivers,” he said. “Caleb. Owen.”
May you like
“Owen is here?”
The bodyguard turned his head.
