CHAPTER 19 #2
Sebastian's pale blue eyes go to me. They are glacial. They are the eyes of a man who at Lake Erie in eighteen twelve hid below decks and has never since let anyone he is responsible for be alone in a fight. I am, in this second, the thing he is responsible for. His mouth flattens.
"Quinn. " The diction is clipped. "Up. Move."
I stay on my knees. My hands are on Ines's hands.
Ines's mouth opens again. Her pale gray-green eyes are now half-lidded. Her voice is going. She finds me.
"Quinn. " It is barely sound. "You should be in Mr. Vance's bed; you should not be on this floor; the building did not — never mind. " She breathes once and the breath is wet. "Va. " She breathes again. The second breath is shallower. "Va."
Her left hand under mine goes loose — not gone yet, only loose.
The pressure at the wound under her palm releases; the palm slides; the blood comes through the cardigan and over the cobalt enamel pin and into the cuff of my dressing gown's right sleeve.
The thread at her mouth becomes a line. Her pale gray-green eyes do not close.
They go far away, looking past the green-shaded lamp at something on the ceiling that is only the brass sconce and the teak.
I keep my fingers wrapped around hers.
Sebastian's hand lands hard at my shoulder — professional rather than cruel; his hand is the way a hand is when a man has been moving wounded people off ships for two hundred years. His fingers find the joint and lift.
"Eliza. " He says it. "Eliza, on your feet. Up. We move. The lobby is hot."
The name lands in the bone of the shoulder under his hand before it lands in the ear.
Eliza. He has called me Quinn since the night Julian brought me into this building.
He has called me Quinn with the same diction he uses for his own boss.
Eliza is the name my mother used. Eliza is the name my father wrote on the inside cover of the first ledger he ever gave me.
Eliza is the name on the engagement letter and on the JD and on the bottom of the summary draft I am about to forget for the rest of my life, because the cabinet on floor 28 is the smallest thing in the world right now.
I look at Sebastian. His eyes are glacial. They are also asking me a question. Are you with me. Yes.
I stand.
The dressing gown's torn seam at the right arm gapes; the cuff is red.
Sebastian, still kneeling, reaches with his left hand to Ines's collar — careful, very careful, the way a man unpins a flag from a casket — and lifts the cobalt enamel of the pin off the cardigan.
The catch clicks open under his thumb. He puts the pin in his own breast pocket, eyes still on me rather than on the cobalt.
"The lobby team will bring her up. " His voice has the bridge-of-a-ship pitch now. "Helene's clinic. Move."
I move.
The elevator. The doors close. The mirror inside the elevator is on the back wall; I keep my eyes on the floor numbers.
Sebastian beside me; his Sig at the low ready.
His left hand at my shoulder where my dressing gown is torn and the cuff is red.
He keeps the hand there for the eleven seconds of the ascent.
The silence between us holds. The cabin smells of cordite and of the iron of Ines's blood on my sleeve and of Sebastian's clean cold skin.
The doors open at floor 45.
Julian is in the foyer.
Black turtleneck, black trousers, no shoes.
His feet on the black granite are pale. His pale gray eyes are pupils blown wide — black eating the gray — and the cold radiating off his skin has dropped the foyer by one full degree; I feel it on the inside of my left wrist where the chemical-burn scar reads temperature differentials.
He is six-foot-two in his stillness; he has not moved since he heard the elevator hum. His hands are at his sides.
The brand under the sleeve of his shirt ticks cold against his skin; the cuff stays buttoned over it. The Webley in the library desk drawer is locked; he has left it there. He is the weapon.
"Sebastian."
Sebastian halts two paces inside the foyer, his grip on my shoulder unchanged.
"Lobby is held. Ines is dead. " He says it at full bridge-of-a-ship diction. "Konstantin's people. Five hostiles in the lobby; two on floor 35; I have neutralized the two. Henrik holds the lobby. Quinn was here. She is unhurt. " He says the last sentence at exactly the volume of the first.
Julian's eyes go from Sebastian to me. They go over me the way he goes over a ledger. Sternum. Shoulders. Hands. Wrists. He sees the blood on the cuff. He sees the slipper-foot on the granite. He sees that I am not the source.
"You are not hurt. " It is a statement. He needs me to say it.
I say it. "I am not hurt."
He breathes out a single measured exhalation. The cold of the foyer rises a quarter-degree.
"Ines is dead. " I say this because someone has to say it to him and Sebastian has already said it and I am the one who has her blood on my sleeve.
"I know. " He says it the way he says things he has already decided how to live with. He looks at Sebastian. "Bring me Henrik in twenty minutes. The service shafts. Now."
"Sir."
Sebastian releases my shoulder. He steps back into the elevator. The doors close. The foyer is silent except for the descending hum.
Julian holds the eight feet between us in the foyer at his stillness. The brand under his sleeve ticks cold. His pupils are still wide. My name stays inside his mouth.
"Quinn. " He uses the surname, the way it has been since the first night.
"The dressing gown. Off. The cuff. I do not want her blood on you.
Helene will be here in two minutes. " His voice is the voice he uses for the things he has decided.
"Walk to the kitchen. I will pour you water.
I will not touch you yet. Tell me when you can be touched. "
I walk to the kitchen.
The Carrara marble of the island is the temperature of the foyer floor. I untie the dressing gown at the waist; I slide my arms out; I let it fall on the brass pot rack hook by the stove. The right sleeve cuff of the cashmere underneath is also red. He sees this. He holds his ground.
"The sweater. Off too."
I lift the cashmere over my head. I am in a thin white camisole and the wool of the trousers I was not wearing because I came down in slippers and a dressing gown and a sweater and the cold of the kitchen at oh-two-forty in a minus-six wind hits my collarbones and slides past me, because the only image my nervous system will register is the two drops on the granite, round as quarters, darkening to bronze.
He fills a glass from the brass tap at the island sink. Cold water. He sets it on the marble at my hand. He stands three feet away. His pupils are still wide. The brand ticks.
"Drink."
I drink. The water hits the back of my throat. Something in my throat unlocks and the next breath comes wet. The tears stay where they are. I have not cried since my mother died, and I have never learned the grammar of it.
Helene arrives.
She comes through the elevator with her steel medical kit and her cobalt enamel pin at her collar.
She sees me at the marble; she sees Julian at the three-foot distance; she sees the cashmere on the hook and the dressing gown on the brass; she sees the white camisole and the red on the cuff.
She sets the kit on the island. She opens it.
She takes my left hand — the inside of the wrist, where the chemical-burn scar is — and presses two fingers to the radial. She counts.
"Bene, signorina. One hundred and ten. Stressato, not shock. " She looks at my pupils with a small light. "Cognition normal. Capito?"
"Capito."
"Eat something hot. Mr. Vance will sit with you. " She turns to Julian. "Mio re, the body is in the corridor. The lobby team is bringing her up. The pin —"
"Sebastian has the pin. " Julian's voice holds at the bridge-of-a-ship pitch. "Put it on your desk. In the white ring of the light. When she is laid in your clinic, put it there."
"Sì. " Helene's eyes are wet at the corners; she holds the wet at the corners. She picks up the kit. She goes to the elevator.
The kitchen is very quiet. The blood refrigerator behind the brushed-steel panel hums at its single-degree tolerance the way it always does. The brass pot rack ticks once as a copper saucepan settles on its hook. Julian stands three feet away in his stillness. He waits.
"You can be touched now," I say.
He crosses the three feet in one breath.
He stops short of taking me into his arms or lifting me, careful — even now, even with the cold off him at one full degree down — with the surfaces of me.
He puts his right palm at the small of my back over the thin camisole and his left palm at the back of my neck under the chestnut hair and he sets his forehead against mine and he stays there.
The brand under his left sleeve is cold against the side of my throat.
"Quinn. " He says it. The surname-as-claim. "Tell me what you need."
"A shower. " My voice is even because I have made it so.
"Then the library. With you. Until dawn.
I want the printed summary brought up from the Greybar by Henrik's team and put in the Faraday safe in the Vault Room without my hand on it.
I want the service shafts closed by sunrise.
I want Atticus Wren picked up — he knew the shafts.
He sat in the bullpen for three weeks in November watching the maintenance cycles.
He sold the building. He sold me. I want him picked up alive.
He turns evidence to the council and we let him live. "
His forehead stays against mine. "Henrik will close the shafts by sunrise. Sebastian will collect Atticus Wren within forty-eight hours. Wren lives if he speaks. Whatever else you want — name it."
"Coffee," I say. "Black. Two raw sugars."