Chương 2
Luis looked at the stain across her shoulder.
“Mr. Mercer?”
She did not answer.
His jaw shifted. “I can tell them I saw—”
“You didn’t see anything.”
“I saw you get into my car hurt.”
“You saw me leave a private residence. That’s all you should say if someone asks.”
He closed the door more carefully than necessary.
Nora paused under the awning. “Luis.”
“Yes?”
“Keep your phone on.”
He nodded once.
The doorman’s expression changed when she crossed the lobby, but he only said, “Evening, Ms. Blake.”
In the elevator, she leaned against the brass rail and watched the numbers rise. Her mother used to tell her never to lean on anything in public. People noticed fatigue, Diane Blake believed. They noticed it and decided what else they could take.
Nora had been eleven when she first heard that advice, sitting in the service corridor outside Eleanor Mercer’s old apartment while her mother worked late. She had spent the evening doing fractions on a legal pad taken from the kitchen desk. Eleanor had passed through, stopped, and corrected one of the problems with a Montblanc pen.
“You’re too smart to guess,” Eleanor had said.
Twenty-two years later, Nora had spent three weeks trying to determine whether that moment had been kindness, recruitment, or both.
Inside her apartment, the quiet felt staged.
Her shoes clicked against the wood floor until she kicked them off near the sofa. She locked the door, slid the chain into place, and stood in the entryway listening. The refrigerator hummed. Rain touched the windows. Somewhere above her, a child dragged something heavy across a floor.
She placed the envelope on the kitchen counter.
Only then did she take off the blouse.
The wine had soaked through to her bra strap and left a red fan across her skin. She turned sideways before the bathroom mirror. The bruise around her eye looked worse in the white light. The cut on her lip was shallow, but the swelling along her cheek had deepened since morning.
The mark on her ribs could not be seen unless she lifted her arm.
She did not lift it.
Her phone vibrated on the counter.
LEAH KIM.
Nora let it ring twice before answering.
“You were supposed to come here,” Leah said.
“I changed my mind.”
“I gathered that. Did you release the files because you changed your mind, or because something happened?”
“Both.”
There was typing in the background. Leah never took notes by hand. She said her handwriting looked like a confession extracted under stress.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Grant threw wine on me.”
The typing stopped.
“And?”
“He knocked me down.”
“With the decanter?”
“No. The envelope hit my hand. I slipped.”
“Nora.”
“He did not strike me with the decanter.”
“That is an astonishingly narrow sentence.”
“It is an accurate one.”
“Was Eleanor there?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“She told me to leave without the envelope.”
Leah was silent.
Nora opened the freezer, took out a bag of peas, and wrapped it in a dish towel.
“Did either of them threaten you?”
“Not in words that would improve our position.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Grant tried to block the door. Then he backed into an ottoman.”
“Did you push him?”
“No.”
“Did you touch him?”
“No.”
“Cameras?”
“Interior system. Mercer-controlled.”
“Luis?”
“He saw me after.”
Leah began typing again. “Take photographs. Face, lip, shoulder, knee, ribs. Save the blouse in a paper bag, not plastic. Don’t wash it.”
Nora pressed the peas to her eye.
“It’s wine, Leah.”
“It’s evidence of the condition you were in when you left the meeting. Don’t decide in advance what matters.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It should. You used to say it to other people.”
Nora closed her eyes.
Leah softened, though only slightly. “The files are out. Helen Price acknowledged receipt. The newspaper has the index, not the underlying records. The state environmental office received the safety archive through outside counsel. Our ethics adviser has the privilege log. Nobody has the USB.”
“I have it.”
“Good. Keep it offline.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to ask you something, and I need you not to answer like a lawyer.”
“That seems discriminatory.”
“Are you safe?”
Nora lowered the peas.
The chain on the door looked thin from the kitchen.
“I don’t know.”
Leah exhaled. “Pack a bag. I’m sending someone.”
“No.”
“This is not the hour to prove you can sleep alone.”
“I’m not proving anything.”
“Then explain.”
Nora looked at the envelope. The wine stain had reached its edge but not broken the seal.
“If I leave,” she said, “they will send someone into the apartment.”
“They may do that anyway.”
“I have a camera.”
“You have a camera sold online for ninety dollars.”
“It was one hundred and twenty.”
“Pack a bag.”
Nora did not move.
Leah’s voice lost patience. “The security director put you into a concrete column forty-eight hours ago. Grant just knocked you down in front of his mother. You released documents that could remove both of them from control of a multibillion-dollar company. Stop behaving as if your apartment is protected by good manners.”
Nora set the peas on the counter.
“He said he was warning me.”
“Ross?”
“Yes.”
“And you still went to the penthouse.”
“I needed to see whether Eleanor knew.”
“You already knew.”
“I suspected.”
“Your face is not a research expense.”
Nora turned toward the windows. Rain threaded the glass, catching light from the apartments across the courtyard.
“She knew,” Nora said.
Leah did not answer immediately.
“How sure are you?”
“She didn’t ask what was in the envelope. She asked me to leave without it.”
“That proves she knew there was something.”
“She watched Grant throw the wine. She never looked surprised.”
“That proves she’s Eleanor.”
May you like
“No. It was different.”
Leah had known Nora since their first year at law school, when they had competed for the same research assistant position and both lost to a student whose father endowed a lecture hall. Leah knew the distinction Nora was making even when she disagreed with it.
