Chương 9
No one in the room moved.
Nora had not said that aloud before. Not to police, not to friends, not even in the apartment where she sometimes spoke to Eva while washing dishes as if grief were a roommate who needed updates.
“I found the blocked call months later,” she said. “Four minutes before the time the medical examiner estimated she was shot.”
Dominic looked away.
“I don’t think fear is failure,” Nora continued. “I think it makes choices expensive. I made mine. Eva paid for it. I won’t make the same one with Lily.”
He rubbed one thumb across the silver face of his watch.
“Then wear the vest,” he said.
At eleven thirty, Nora stood in a service hallway behind the music foundation wearing a ballistic vest beneath a black coat. It made her shoulders stiff and her breathing shallow. A small transmitter rested beneath her collar.
Ruiz adjusted it once and told her not to touch it again.
Dominic waited near the alley entrance, the blue folder tucked beneath one arm. He had replaced his black dress shirt with another nearly identical one. His men had been ordered to remain away.
Nora suspected at least two had ignored him.
The foundation had closed after Eva’s death. Dust covered the lobby piano. A banner advertising a youth recital still hung above the reception desk, one corner drooping where the tape had failed.
Nora could hear traffic beyond the alley and the hum of the building’s old heating system.
Ruiz spoke into her earpiece. “Remember, we need Marcus visible, identifiable, and preferably separated from any weapon. Do not provoke a confession. Do not promise anything. Do not pursue him if he runs.”
Dominic looked at Nora. “She says that as if you listen.”
“I listened to Eva once or twice.”
“Not when it mattered.”
Nora turned toward him.
His eyes closed briefly. “That was unnecessary.”
“Yes.”
“I apologize.”
The words sounded difficult in his mouth.
She nodded.
He touched the folder. “If Marcus believes this contains evidence against me, he may try to use it as leverage.”
“It does contain evidence against you.”
“Copies.”
“Still evidence.”
Dominic’s gaze moved toward the locked rehearsal room where Ruiz’s team waited.
“Nora.”
“What?”
“When this is over, the drives Eva left will not only destroy Marcus.”
“I know.”
“They may take Lily from me.”
“They may.”
He swallowed once. “Would you help them?”
The answer could not be kind and honest at the same time.
“I would help Lily.”
A small muscle moved beneath his eye.
He nodded.
That was the moment Nora understood he had already made part of his decision. He had entered the building knowing Eva’s records could send him to prison, and he had not asked Ruiz to destroy them. For Dominic, restraint was not goodness. It was labor. She could see the cost in every deliberate movement of his hands.
Midnight came without Marcus.
At twelve ten, a burner phone began ringing inside the blue folder.
Dominic opened it.
A cheap device had been taped beneath the documents. No one had placed it there at Pike’s office.
Ruiz cursed softly in Nora’s earpiece.
Dominic answered.
Marcus’s voice came through. “You brought police.”
“You asked for Nora.”
“I asked for obedience.”
“You lost the right to ask me for anything.”
Marcus laughed. The sound was strained. “You still think rights exist between us?”
Nora heard an echo behind him. Large room, hard surfaces.
Dominic heard it too.
“You killed Bellini,” he said.
“He was going to talk.”
“You made him help you.”
“I paid him. There’s a difference.”
“Where are you?”
“You’re standing in the place where your wife chose strangers over you. How does that feel?”
Dominic’s fingers tightened around the phone.
Nora watched his face, willing him not to become the man Marcus expected.
He said, “You killed Eva because she found the money.”
“I killed Eva because she was going to turn all of us into evidence.”
“All of us?”
“You, me, every driver who carried a package, every clerk who changed a number because your wife smiled at him. She wanted to become innocent by handing everyone else the bill.”
Nora moved closer to the phone. “She wanted to leave.”
Marcus went quiet.
Then he said, “Hello, Nora.”
The name sounded intimate and hateful.
“You put the phone in the folder,” she said.
“I had help.”
“Pike’s paralegal?”
“Everyone has a price. Most people are insulted only because you guess too low.”
Ruiz whispered that officers were moving toward Pike’s office to detain the paralegal.
Marcus continued. “Bring the bracelet to the stage.”
Nora looked through the dark lobby toward the auditorium doors.
He was inside the building.
Ruiz gave a silent signal. Her team shifted.
Dominic took Nora’s arm. “No.”
Marcus heard the movement. “She comes alone, or the next picture is not of Lily sleeping.”
Nora’s pulse jumped.
“You cannot reach her,” Dominic said.
“I reached her this morning.”
“That person is in custody.”
“There are always more people who need money.”
Nora took the phone.
“What do you think the bracelet opens?”
Marcus’s breathing changed.
“The part Eva never trusted you with,” Nora said.
“Stage. Two minutes.”
The call ended.
Ruiz opposed Nora entering the auditorium alone. Dominic opposed it more forcefully. Nora listened until both began repeating themselves.
“He is watching the exits,” she said. “He wants me exposed. Give him that.”
Ruiz checked the position of her team.
Dominic took Nora aside. “The bracelet is on Lily.”
“I know.”
“What will you give him?”
Nora removed the silver chain Eva had given her from beneath her sweater. A small gold pendant hung from it. From a distance, in poor light, its shape resembled the wolf clasp.
Dominic looked at the pendant. “What is that?”
“A vending-machine token.”
He stared at her.
“Eva drilled a hole through it in college because I told her jewelry was a waste of money.”
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“You kept it.”
“She said one day it would be worth something.”
