31. Avery #2
The paralegals left one legal pad, an uncapped pen, and a client box on the conference table when Nadia sent them out.
I stop beside the far chair, placing the table between Sasha and the fire door while leaving my office visible through the second conference-room entrance.
The safe that held my gun sits beneath my desk with its door closed.
If Sasha searches it, she’ll find nothing but the spare holster and the sign-out sheet Nadia makes me complete every time I move the weapon.
I’m wearing the only thing she expects to find.
“Neither one is here,” I say. “The original burner has been in police evidence since October. The archive went to my attorney, Cruz, and two detectives before I moved into the rental. The parcel insert is stored with the same case file. You watched this building for six weeks and never saw me bring either through the door.”
“You kept an original.” Sasha comes closer to the table, refusing the empty office while she tries to make my certainty crack. “You don’t trust the club. You don’t trust Declan. A woman like you keeps the page that proves she was right.”
Five months ago, the accusation would’ve reached the part of me that catalogued every copy after finding Declan naked.
I kept evidence because my husband lied with his mouth, his money, his bed, and every place I once trusted him to leave undefended.
I also learned quickly that keeping the only copy made me easier to corner.
Nadia taught me the rest of it in one afternoon with a scanner, three envelopes, and a courier receipt she made me sign myself.
“I kept copies,” I tell her, sliding one hand along the table so she can see it while the other remains near my coat. “You came for originals that stopped mattering months ago.” The way she rejects the answer tells me the objects matter less than forcing me to surrender them.
She circles the near end of the table. I move with her, keeping the wood between us and my right hand near the open edge of my coat.
The recorder sits beneath the credenza inside the wall, its light hidden from anyone who doesn’t know where Nadia had it installed.
Declan is somewhere outside if he obeyed the plan.
I can picture him hearing Sasha’s voice and looking at every door like the building insulted him personally.
The image takes me straight to the safehouse porch, the men he once ordered around my life, and every time he called control protection.
If he comes through the wrong door now, Sasha will use him to move the gun. I need him to stay where I put him.
“Declan is on his way,” Sasha says, as if she heard his name inside my head. “He always comes when I make him choose. The house. The club. You. He only needs to believe he can fix what I touched.”
“Declan isn’t my husband.” I nudge the conference-room door wider with my heel, giving the recorder a clearer path and Nadia more room to hear if she has stopped below us. “He also isn’t coming through that elevator to save you from what you say next.”
For the first time, Sasha looks toward the hall rather than me.
Her gun dips a fraction, not far enough for my hand to reach the holster without announcing it.
I hate the patience my instructor forced into me at the range.
He made me practice walking away from a clean target when the shot belonged to fear instead of necessity, then made me explain what stood behind the paper every time I wanted to fire.
Today there is a street, a stairwell, my boss, and a child behind every choice I make. I keep my fingers off the gun.
Sasha crosses to the client box and knocks it from the table. Files spill across the carpet, pages sliding beneath chairs while the box clips the metal leg hard enough for the recorder to catch it. “Open the damned office, Avery. I’m finished letting you turn my work into your little career.”
“You mean the shell companies I found because you spelled the same lie two ways?” I move toward the second conference-room door, closer to my office and farther from the stairs where Nadia disappeared. “You watched me work for six weeks and never learned to proofread.”
Anger reaches Sasha before the gun does.
She lunges around the table, catches my coat at the shoulder, and shoves me through the second doorway.
My hip hits the frame, and the baby moves hard beneath my hand.
My palm finds the wall and my knees take the rest of it.
Sasha is close enough to seize my wrist before the gun clears the holster, so I leave the grip where it sits, let the coat pull free from her fist, and keep both feet under me.
“You think I came for your paperwork?” she asks, breath carrying the jasmine smell I first noticed in the safehouse.
“I want the phone he used with me. I want the page he hid after he realized you mattered more frightened than dead. I want what he kept when he thought the two of you might play family after this.”
“Neither one of those is worth what you just did to get inside this building.” I face her across the short distance between the conference room and my office, with the recorder behind us and my hand resting above the holster she hasn’t seen.
She burned my house, watched my job, and entered a law office carrying a gun for two objects she can no longer reach.
She is no less dangerous for arriving too late, but she hasn’t realized that yet. “You cornered me for nothing, Sasha.”