Chương 3
“What kind of work?”
“I’m not sure exactly. Operations. Development projects.”
“You had met him before?”
“Twice, maybe three times.”
“Did he have permission to be in your house tonight?”
“No.”
“Did he say why he was here?”
Claire heard again the scrape of Wade’s shoe and the metallic crack of the baton.
“He said he didn’t come for the children. Then he told me to ask my husband what he keeps in the wall.”
Bell stopped writing.
Ortiz did not move.
“What wall?”
“He looked at my husband’s office.”
“Does your husband keep a safe there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“A hidden compartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“You live here.”
The words were neutral. Claire still felt them.
“I know where we keep the towels,” she said. “I know which window leaks when rain comes from the east. I don’t know what my husband has built into his office walls.”
Ortiz watched her for a moment.
“Fair enough.”
Evan called again. This time Claire silenced the phone.
The police found Hannah’s car two blocks away, parked crookedly near a fire hydrant. Her handbag remained on the passenger seat. An officer located her thirty minutes later at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, barefoot and shaking. Wade had entered through the kitchen while she was putting dishes into the dishwasher. He had shown her the baton and ordered her to leave her phone on the counter. He told her to walk out the back door and keep walking if she wanted the children unharmed.
Hannah had obeyed, then hidden behind a hedge until he moved away from the windows. She had run toward the nearest open business. She said she had been trying to remember Claire’s phone number when the police found her.
“Why didn’t she use the pharmacy phone?” Ruby asked when Ortiz explained.
“She was scared,” Claire said.
Ruby looked dissatisfied.
“She left us.”
“She went for help.”
“She left us.”
Marisol opened her mouth, but Claire shook her head.
Ruby had earned the right to be unfair for at least one night.
Evan arrived shortly after two in the morning. He came through the front doors with his overcoat unbuttoned and his tie tucked into one pocket. Claire had never seen him enter a room without first deciding how he wanted to be perceived. That night he looked as if the decision had been made for him.
He crossed the foyer quickly.
Ruby stepped in front of Grace and Owen.
The movement was slight. Evan saw it.
His pace faltered.
“My God,” he said. “Are you all right?”
Claire rose from the living-room sofa. Her legs had stiffened. The bruise on her arm had darkened beneath an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel.
“We’re not hurt badly.”
Evan reached for her. She let him touch her shoulders but did not move into him.
He looked past her to the children.
“Ruby.”
She stared at his shoes.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
“Why did he know our house?”
Evan’s hands fell.
“What?”
“He knew the back door. He knew Dad’s office. He knew where the cameras didn’t see.”
The last statement came from something Hannah had told police. Claire had not known Ruby was listening.
Evan glanced toward Detective Ortiz, who stood near the office entrance with Bell.
“Wade worked for the company,” he said. “He’d been here.”
“Why did he come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“You fired him,” Claire said.
Evan turned to her.
“He was terminated. Years ago.”
“For what?”
“This is not the time.”
Ortiz stepped closer.
“It’s an excellent time from our perspective.”
Evan’s face changed in a way most people would have missed. His mouth stayed relaxed, but a pulse moved once beneath his jaw.
“I need to speak to counsel before discussing company matters.”
“Your former employee entered your home and threatened your children.”
“And I want him prosecuted.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I just flew in from Chicago. My children are terrified. My wife has been attacked. I’m not conducting an internal review in my foyer at two in the morning.”
Claire had heard versions of that voice directed at contractors, airline employees, a restaurant manager who had seated them beside the kitchen. Evan never raised it. He removed warmth from it until the other person felt childish for continuing.
Ortiz did not seem to feel childish.
“We’ll speak again,” she said.
“I’m sure we will.”
The police finished their initial work near dawn. They sealed Evan’s office until a judge could review an application to search it, though Evan objected that the request was based on the statement of a violent intruder. Ortiz told him the seal was temporary and that breaking it would create a problem larger than the inconvenience.
After the last officer left, the house became impossibly quiet.
The baton was gone, but its absence seemed to occupy the place where it had landed. The marble had a faint gray mark near the console table. Claire rubbed it with her thumb and discovered it was only dust from an evidence technician’s shoe.
Marisol made eggs nobody ate.
Evan took calls in the kitchen with his voice lowered. Claire caught fragments: outside counsel, reputational exposure, security audit, statement by morning.
Ruby stood at the foot of the staircase.
“I don’t want to go up.”
“We can stay downstairs,” Claire said.
“All of us?”
“All of us.”
Evan came in holding his phone.
“I’ve arranged rooms at the Langham.”
“No,” Ruby said.
He looked at her as though he had not expected an answer.
“The house is secure now.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“We’re not staying here tonight,” Evan said. “That’s not a debate.”
Claire watched Ruby’s shoulders rise.
“It can be a discussion.”
Evan turned toward her.
“Claire.”
“She was held in front of a weapon three hours ago. We can discuss where she sleeps.”
His face tightened.
“I am trying to protect them.”
“So am I.”
May you like
Marisol scraped eggs from a pan into the sink. The ordinary sound embarrassed everyone.
They compromised badly. They did not go to the hotel, and they did not go upstairs. Evan carried blankets from the guest rooms. The children slept together in the media room with every light on. Claire lay beside them on a sectional sofa while Evan sat in a chair near the door.
