Chapter 18 #3
She cried again, silently this time. Then I saw one message that made my stomach tighten.
“They asked about Hartwell?” I asked.
Jules nodded. “I said you didn’t know anything about Hartwell.”
“Good.”
“I didn’t tell them work things. I wouldn’t.”
I believed her.
“They still think they have you,” I said, the first glimmers of an idea coming to me.
Jules went still. “What?”
“They don’t know you confessed.”
“No.”
“They think you’re still scared.”
“I am still scared.”
“I know.” I sat back slowly, staring at the messages. “But they think scared means controllable.”
Jules stared at me and my eyes held hers. For the first time all night, the calm in me changed. It was still brittle, still frightening, but now it had direction.
“Avery,” Jules said carefully. “What are you thinking?”
I stood and went to my desk.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting a notebook.”
“Why?”
“Because Benjamin has ruined me and now I respect documentation.”
“That is not an answer.”
I found a clean notebook under a stack of old mail, grabbed two pens, and came back to the couch. Jules watched me like I had just picked up a weapon, which, in a way, I had.
“I’m just going to go solve this problem on my own,” I declared with undoubtedly misplaced pride.
Jules blinked. “That sentence is horrifying.”
“Good. Then it matches the situation.”
“Avery.”
“I don’t mean alone alone.” I sat beside her and opened the notebook to the first blank page.
“I mean not sitting around waiting while Callum, Benjamin, Dana, Tom, Marcus, Elise, outside counsel, probably the mayor’s dentist, and a small army of terrifyingly competent people decide how to protect me. ”
“They are probably better qualified.”
“Maybe.” I uncapped the pen. “But none of them know what Becca said to you. None of them know how she made you trust her enough to answer her questions. None of them know me the way you do. And none of them are you.”
Jules’s face went pale again. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I know the tone. The tone is bad.”
“The tone is strategic.”
“The tone is how women end up in documentaries with moody reenactments.”
“Jules.”
“No. Absolutely not. I already hurt you. I am not helping you walk into something worse.”
I looked at her for a long moment. Then I reached across the space between us and took her hand.
She froze.
I squeezed once.
“You hurt me,” I said. “You did. We are not skipping that chapter. But you are also my best friend. And they hurt you too.”
Her mouth trembled.
“So, we are going to be smarter than they think we are,” I said.
“We are going to write down everything. We are going to figure out what they wanted from you, what they already had, what they still don’t know, and why they needed you in the first place.
Then we are going to decide what to do with that. ”
“And Callum?”
“I’ll tell him,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation.
Jules narrowed her eyes through tears. “Before or after?”
I looked down at the blank page.
“Avery.”
“Before it matters.”
“That is such a Callum answer, I want to throw something.”
“Fine. I’ll tell him before I do anything irreversible.”
“Better, but still suspicious.”
“It’s the best I can offer while emotionally compromised.”
She let out a shaky breath, then looked at the notebook. For a moment, I thought she would refuse. Then she reached for the second pen.
“Write Becca at the top,” she said.
I did.
The name looked small on the page for someone that had done so much damage.
Jules leaned forward, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “She called first from a blocked number, but the texts started after. I think the email came before the second call. She had this way of saying things like she was doing me a favor.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“Corporate mafia with moisturizer.”
I smiled despite myself. “There’s my girl.”
Jules flinched at the phrase, and I almost apologized.
Then she smiled weakly. “Careful. That line belongs to your morally complicated billionaire now.”
“He can share.”
“Can he?”
“No.”
We laughed again, softer this time, and I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
Then we got to work. The apartment darkened all around us as the hours passed.
Jules’s mascara dried in dark smudges under her eyes.
Somewhere between the second and third pages of notes, she stopped shaking.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth, I stopped feeling like an illegally photographed thing and started feeling like a person holding a spotlight.
By two in the morning, Jules sat cross-legged on my floor with her laptop open, whispering old contact names to herself and searching for things she should probably not have known how to search for. I sat at the desk with the notebook, copying the cleanest timeline onto a fresh page.
“We should sleep,” Jules said without conviction.
“We should do many things.”
“Like tell Callum.”
“Eventually.”
“Avery.”
“I said eventually.”
“That word is doing felony-level work.”
I looked over at her and she looked right back. We both smiled, just a little, because the friendship was not fixed, not magically, not in one night, but we still had each other and we both knew that.
My phone buzzed on the desk.
Callum Rowe: You’re still awake.
I stared at the message.
Jules leaned over. “How does he know?”
“He’s Callum.”
“That is not a satisfying answer.”
“It’s the only one we have.”
I typed back.
Me: So are you.
His reply came quickly.
Callum Rowe: I said it first.
Despite everything, I smiled the teensiest bit.
Me: Jules is here. I’m safe.
A pause.
Callum Rowe: Are you going to bed soon?
Me: Not yet.
Callum Rowe: Avery.
I swallowed and typed:
Me: I’ll explain when I see you Monday.
Then, before he could answer, I added:
Me: I promise.
Callum Rowe: That promise is the only reason I’m not getting in the car right now and coming to you.
My chest tightened.
Me: I know.
Callum Rowe: Lock the door.
Me: Already locked.
Callum Rowe: Good girl.
I closed my eyes as the words moved through me, warm and complicated and mine. When I opened them, Jules was watching me with a mixture of apology, worry, and the beginning of a very bad idea.
“What?” I asked.
She wiped under one eye with her sleeve. “You know he’s going to lose his mind.”
“Probably.”
Jules looked at the notebook again, then back at me.
“So,” she said, voice steadier now. “What do we do first?”
I turned the page.
“First,” I said, “we figure out who they really are.”
“And then?”
I looked down at the page and wrote the first line.
“Then,” I said, “we use it against them.”