Chương 2
“I have forty-two minutes left,” she said. “Then I clock out.”
Marcus looked at the DNA report in his hand as though he had forgotten it was there.
Evelyn said, “This is absurd.”
Hannah almost admired her consistency.
Marcus turned to his mother. “The flight is canceled.”
“You cannot cancel a flight to London because a woman has a necklace.”
“She’s not a woman with a necklace.”
“Marcus.”
He folded the DNA report again, more carefully this time. “Go home.”
Evelyn stared at him.
For a moment Hannah saw something almost childish pass across her face. Not fear exactly. Injury.
It disappeared.
“I will be in the car.”
“No. You’ll go home.”
“Do not give me orders in front of employees.”
Marcus looked toward the mechanics pretending not to hear.
“Then stop making scenes in front of employees.”
Evelyn’s eyes went to Hannah.
The anger was still there, but something else had joined it now. Calculation, certainly. Maybe shame. Maybe only the awareness that she had lost control of the room.
She walked toward the black SUV without another word.
Her heels struck the concrete in precise, even beats.
David picked up the briefcase.
Marcus remained where he was.
Hannah tucked the locket back beneath her jumpsuit.
“Don’t,” Marcus said.
She looked at him.
“Please.”
That word sounded strange in his voice.
She let the locket remain visible.
For the last forty-two minutes of her shift, Marcus Cross sat on a folding chair near a tool cage and did not speak to her.
Hannah found that worse than if he had.
She checked a hydraulic service log twice because the first time she had written the wrong tail number. She returned a torque wrench to the wrong drawer. Luis quietly moved it after her without comment.
At 11:18 p.m., her supervisor, Ken Morrow, appeared from the dispatch office with a paper cup of coffee and the exhausted expression of a man who had already been told enough to know he wanted to know less.
“You okay?”
Hannah was crouched beside a tool chest.
“Yes.”
Ken looked at her cheek.
“Right.”
He sipped the coffee.
“That woman hit you?”
Hannah stood.
“Yeah.”
“You want me to call airport police?”
She glanced toward Marcus.
He looked away immediately, giving her the privacy of pretending not to listen.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“No,” Hannah said. “But I don’t want police.”
Ken nodded.
He had once described marriage as “thirty years of being told I load a dishwasher with malice,” and Hannah liked him for reasons she had never bothered to explain.
“You need tomorrow?”
“I need the paycheck.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I know.”
Ken rubbed his nose.
“Take tomorrow.”
“Ken.”
“You’ve got personal hours.”
“I used most of them when my mother—”
“I can read a time sheet, Reed.”
She stopped.
“Take tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He glanced at Marcus again.
“You know him?”
“Apparently.”
Ken waited.
Hannah did not explain.
“Fair enough,” he said.
He walked off carrying his coffee.
At 11:23 Hannah clocked out.
Marcus was waiting by the employee exit. David stood farther back, speaking quietly into his phone.
Hannah pulled on her old green canvas jacket over the mechanic’s jumpsuit.
Marcus stared at the locket until she put the jacket on.
“You have somewhere we can talk?”
“I have an apartment.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant.”
He exhaled.
Hannah picked up her backpack.
“You own half the places in Manhattan where people go to talk.”
“Not half.”
She looked at him.
He blinked, then gave a short, startled laugh.
It lasted less than a second.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
His face closed again.
“Tonight.”
“That’s a lot of territory.”
“My mother hitting you.”
Hannah adjusted the backpack strap.
“And the other twenty-nine years?”
Marcus had no answer.
She walked past him toward the employee lot.
He followed.
The rain had eased from violent to merely miserable. Water ran along the curb in dark streams. Hannah’s twelve-year-old Honda sat between two pickup trucks, its rear bumper held perfectly well by a replacement clip that did not match the others.
Marcus stopped when he saw it.
She opened the driver’s door.
“You’re just leaving?”
“Yes.”
“We need to talk.”
“You need to talk.”
His face tightened.
“That report says you’re my sister.”
“I know what it says.”
“You’ve had three days with that. I’ve had maybe twelve minutes.”
Hannah rested her hand on the top of the car door.
That was fair.
She resented him for making a fair point.
“Twenty minutes,” she said. “There’s a diner on Rockaway Boulevard.”
“I can have my driver—”
“I’m driving myself.”
“Okay.”
“And your investigator doesn’t sit with us.”
Marcus glanced at David.
“Okay.”
“And if your mother shows up, I leave.”
“She won’t.”
“You say that with a lot of confidence for a man who watched her slap me less than an hour ago.”
His eyes dropped.
“Fair.”
Hannah got in.
The diner smelled like burnt coffee, lemon cleaner, frying onions, and wet coats.
At midnight, half the booths were empty. A pair of baggage handlers sat at the counter watching baseball highlights with the sound off. A woman in scrubs was eating pancakes while reading something on her phone. Nobody cared that Marcus Cross had walked in wearing a charcoal suit that probably cost more than Hannah’s car.
He looked relieved by that.
They took a booth near the back.
A waitress handed them menus.
Marcus did not open his.
Hannah did.
She had not eaten since four.
“You’re eating?”
“Yes.”
He looked almost offended by the existence of hunger.
She glanced over the top of the menu. “Do you want me to stop being a mammal because your life got complicated?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He looked down.
“I’m not doing very well.”
“That makes two of us.”
The waitress returned.
Hannah ordered grilled cheese, fries, and coffee.
Marcus asked for coffee.
May you like
When the waitress left, he put the DNA report on the table.
It was inside a clear document sleeve now. David had apparently saved it from Marcus’s folding habits.
