Chương 2
She lowered herself onto the carpet, crossing her legs. Leo watched her knees, then the towel rabbit between them.
Graham wanted to pick it up. He wanted to restore the small object to his son’s hands and reverse the last minute. Instead, he stayed where Leo could see him.
“May I call someone?” he asked Savannah.
“Not from the speaker system.”
“My phone.”
“Turn off the vibration.”
Graham did. “Who?”
“The police.”
Frankie’s composure shifted again, almost invisibly.
“You don’t call the police on a six-year-old’s sentence before you understand what he means,” he said.
Savannah looked up at him. “Nobody is calling them on Leo.”
“You know nothing about this family.”
“I know what fear looks like.”
“You clean rooms.”
“And you should step back.”
Frankie looked at Graham as though waiting for him to correct an employee who had forgotten the shape of the world.
Graham took out his phone and called 911.
Frankie did not try to stop him. That disturbed Graham more than if he had.
While they waited, Leo did not speak again.
He reached for the rabbit only after Savannah asked whether he wanted it closer. She moved it six inches with one finger. He pulled it into his lap and smoothed the crushed ear. His breathing slowed.
Graham gave the dispatcher the address, the private elevator instructions, and his name. He said his son had disclosed a possible prior abduction involving a man currently inside the residence. The words sounded absurdly formal. They were the words of a stranger reporting a crime in a stranger’s home.
Frankie sat in the armchair across from the sofa.
He crossed one ankle over his knee. The ring remained visible.
“You should let me explain before uniforms come through that door,” he said.
“Explain.”
“Privately.”
“No.”
“Not in front of him.”
“You’re right about that.”
Graham asked Savannah whether she could take Leo to the bedroom.
Leo’s whole body tightened.
Savannah noticed before Graham did. “He may not want to leave this room.”
Graham lowered himself into a crouch, careful to keep distance between them. “Leo, you can stay here. Nobody is taking you anywhere.”
Leo stared at Graham’s open collar.
“Savannah can stay,” Graham added.
The boy touched the towel rabbit’s left ear twice.
Savannah glanced at Graham. “Does that mean something?”
“Yes. It means yes. Usually.”
“Usually isn’t the same as yes.”
Graham felt heat climb under his shirt. He had answered too quickly because he could not bear not knowing.
Savannah turned back to Leo. “Touch once for no, twice for yes. Do you want me to stay?”
Leo touched the ear twice.
“All right.”
Graham stood.
Frankie watched the exchange. “He’s been doing that for months?”
“Don’t speak to him.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re speaking about him as if he’s not here.”
For the first time, irritation escaped Frankie’s control. “You think I don’t know what he’s been through?”
Graham’s phone rang. The building’s security director said officers had arrived in the lobby. Graham told him to bring them up without notifying hotel management or corporate communications.
Frankie uncrossed his legs.
“I moved Leo once,” he said. “Two years ago, during an emergency. I moved him because Evelyn asked me to.”
Graham’s hand tightened around the phone.
Savannah did not look away from Leo, but the boy’s fingers stopped moving over the towel.
“My wife asked you to take our son?”
“She believed there was a threat.”
“What threat?”
“She wouldn’t tell me everything.”
“You expect me to believe Evelyn handed you Leo and disappeared?”
“No. I expect you to remember what she was like during the last month.”
Graham remembered slammed doors. A suitcase in the dressing room. Evelyn sleeping in the library because she said the bedroom felt monitored. He remembered dismissing the word as theatrical. The cameras covered entrances, halls, elevators, and exterior terraces. Nothing covered the bedroom.
Nothing he had authorized.
“You told me she left alone,” Graham said.
“That was what I understood at the time.”
“Did you take him?”
“I relocated him for several hours.”
“Where?”
Frankie looked at Savannah. “This is exactly why we should speak privately.”
The elevator chimed.
Leo flinched so sharply that the rabbit fell again.
Savannah lifted one hand toward the approaching officers. “Slowly, please.”
Three uniformed officers entered with a detective from the Midtown North precinct and a building security manager whose face had already adopted the pale, strained look of a man imagining newspapers.
The detective introduced herself as Rosa Alvarez.
She asked who had made the call. Graham answered. She asked where the child was. Savannah indicated Leo with a small movement, then explained that sudden voices and close approaches distressed him.
Alvarez lowered her volume. She did not crouch in front of Leo or ask him what happened. Instead, she requested that the adults move to separate areas while a child specialist was contacted.
Frankie stood.
Martin appeared in the doorway immediately.
“Sit down,” Alvarez told Frankie.
“I’m cooperating.”
“Then sit.”
He did.
Graham had spent most of his adult life in rooms where everyone knew his name and adjusted accordingly. Alvarez knew it too. She did not appear impressed by it or hostile to it. Her attention stayed on the problem in front of her.
She asked Graham whether Frankie had current access to the child.
“He has access to this residence, the hotel, our vehicles, our security system, and our travel schedules.”
“Not anymore,” Graham said.
Alvarez looked at the building security manager. “Can you disable that access without destroying records?”
The man began nodding before she finished. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“Do it. Preserve the logs.”
Frankie leaned forward. “Detective, before this becomes theater, I want counsel.”
“That’s your right.”
“I have not been accused of a crime.”
“A child just said you took him.”
“A child with a documented communication disorder repeated a phrase after being agitated by an employee.”
May you like
Savannah looked at him then.
Graham saw the anger in her face, though her voice remained steady. “I never used your name with him.”
