Part 4
“Search her.”
She slapped his hand away.
He shoved her against the wall.
The elevator opened, and she ran.
By the time federal agents entered the utility closet on the sixty-first floor, Mara had lived through the failure of every assumption she made about the evening.
Naomi reached her first. She was forty-eight, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a plain dark suit that made her look like an exhausted attorney. She took in Mara’s bare feet, torn gown, and bleeding face without changing expression.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“That’s better.”
Two agents led Luis away to give a statement. He looked back once, and Mara lifted a hand. He seemed embarrassed by the attention.
Naomi touched the cut above Mara’s eyebrow with a folded gauze pad.
“Adrian?”
“Alive. Detained upstairs.”
“Celeste?”
“Also alive. Also annoyed.”
“That sounds like her.”
“Dwyer?”
“Missing.”
“He had the case.”
“I know.”
“The beam wasn’t yours.”
“No.”
Mara held up the pendant. “This opened the utility closet. It may have triggered the case.”
Naomi examined the disk behind the stone. “Did Celeste give it to you?”
“It was my mother’s necklace.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Yes.”
Naomi’s mouth tightened.
“What?”
“We scanned the credential three weeks ago.”
Mara stared at her. “You did?”
“With your permission.”
“You scanned the necklace. You said you were checking for transmitters.”
“We found none.”
“There’s a credential in it.”
“There wasn’t then.”
The stairwell seemed to narrow around them.
Mara looked at the green stone, at the delicate platinum setting she had known since childhood. Her mother had worn it in photographs, on anniversaries, at Christmas dinners, and once while washing dishes because she had forgotten to take it off after a hospital fundraiser.
Someone had altered it after Naomi’s scan.
Only two people had handled the necklace since then: the jeweler Celeste recommended and Celeste herself.
Naomi said, “We need to get you downstairs.”
“What happens to Adrian?”
“He’ll be questioned. We have probable cause on the assault and obstruction. The financial case is more complicated without the archive.”
“He tried to steal it.”
“We have testimony that he tried to open a metal case inside a residence where he has legal access. His attorneys will describe it as a domestic property dispute.”
“He chained the stairs.”
“That helps. It doesn’t prove the accounts.”
Mara laughed once, without humor. “Of course it doesn’t.”
Naomi waited for her to look up.
“Where would Dwyer take the case?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who does he trust?”
“Adrian.”
“Not tonight.”
The low scanning tone had stopped. Rain continued against the building. Far below, sirens moved through the city, their sound softened by height and glass.
Mara closed the pendant’s hidden plate.
“Celeste knows,” she said.
Celeste had not gone downstairs with the other witnesses. She remained in the penthouse while agents photographed the damaged marble, the broken champagne glass Adrian had thrown at Dwyer, the belt, and a dark smear of blood near the private elevator.
Someone had given her a gray wool blanket. She wore it over her shoulders without gratitude.
When Mara entered with Naomi, Celeste glanced at the bandage above Mara’s eyebrow.
“That color was a poor choice,” she said.
Mara looked down at the emerald gown. “Because it shows blood?”
“Because it invites comparison with the necklace.”
Naomi pulled a chair forward and sat opposite her. “Where is Patrick Dwyer?”
Celeste lifted her coupe, discovered it empty, and set it down.
“I assume he has left.”
“With the case.”
“So I’m told.”
“You told him to take it,” Mara said.
Celeste studied her face. “Did I?”
“The necklace credential wasn’t there three weeks ago.”
For the first time that night, something unguarded moved across Celeste’s expression. Not guilt. Irritation.
“Agent Price inspected a family heirloom?”
“Mara authorized the inspection,” Naomi said.
“How dutiful.”
Mara stepped closer. Her ribs protested. “What was the beam?”
Celeste looked toward the windows. The storm had moved east, revealing strips of black sky between the clouds.
“A verification system.”
“Whose?”
“A firm in Rotterdam designed it for asset recovery.”
Naomi leaned forward. “You brought an unauthorized tracking drone into restricted city airspace?”
“I did not pilot anything.”
“You hired someone who did.”
“I retained consultants to secure property belonging to a family trust.”
“You marked Adrian’s chest.”
“The system identified the person nearest the asset.”
“It looked like a weapon target.”
Celeste’s eyes returned to Mara. “That was the point.”
The answer settled into the room with more weight than a confession.
“You wanted to frighten him,” Mara said.
“I wanted him to stop striking the case.”
“You could have warned me.”
“Would you have behaved naturally?”
“I was bleeding in a hallway.”
“And still capable of making a telephone call.”
Mara took another step. Naomi rose slightly, ready to intervene, but Mara stopped on her own.
“Where did Dwyer take it?”
Celeste folded the blanket more tightly around herself. “Somewhere Adrian could not.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It is protection.”
“From whom?”
“Everyone presently asking.”
Mara looked at the high-backed chair, the polished floor, and the city spread beneath them. She remembered being nine years old in Celeste’s country house, knocking over a porcelain bowl and telling a maid not to mention it. Celeste had overheard. She did not punish Mara for breaking the bowl. She punished her for assuming the maid should carry the lie.
Power, Celeste told her then, revealed itself in the person expected to absorb the consequence.
Now Mara understood why the lesson had endured. Celeste did not object to concealed damage. She objected to clumsy arrangements.
Naomi said, “If you interfere with federal evidence—”
“It is not federal evidence until you possess it.”
“You arranged an illegal extraction during an active operation.”
“I arranged for an object to remain secure after your operation failed.”
“It failed because your contractor disrupted the building.”
“It failed because Adrian knew the transfer was happening.”
Celeste looked at Mara.
May you like
The implication arrived before the words.
“You think I told him?” Mara asked.
