Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Riverside Park at nine o'clock on a cool summer evening was exactly what Archer had wanted it to be. Empty. Dark. The river moving below the promenade with the particular indifference of water that had been moving past this city for longer than anyone currently causing trouble in it had been alive.
He stood at the railing and waited.
Davis was three minutes late, which Archer knew was deliberate. Davis was always premeditated about things he thought signaled power. Archer heard him before he saw him, the particular cadence of a man who walked like he owned whatever ground he was crossing.
"Archer." Davis came to stand beside him at the railing and looked out at the river with a manufactured expression of solemnity. He was wearing a dark overcoat and looked, as he always managed to look, like a man arriving at an event rather than a meeting. "Hell of a day."
"Yes," Archer agreed.
"Poor Vincent Kelly." Davis shook his head slowly. "I heard it was quick at least. Small mercies."
"You didn't like Vincent Kelly," Archer stated. "You were in business with him and you didn't like him. You're not sorry he's dead, so let's skip that part and get to the part you actually came here for."
Davis was quiet for a moment. Then he smiled. "Still the same Archer."
"Always," Archer said.
In his earpiece, Ryker's voice came in low and steady. "Perimeter is clear. Two joggers went through twenty minutes ago, haven't come back. You're clean."
Archer kept his eyes on the river.
"I genuinely didn't know about Kelly," Davis said, and there was something in his voice that was different from the usual performance. Flatter. More real. "That wasn't me."
Archer gauged the man’s words and expression.
He was telling the truth. Archer had been reading people his entire life, and Davis was many things, but in this moment, he was telling the truth.
He hadn't known about Kelly. Which meant the Curator had moved without telling him.
It appeared Davis's control over his own situation was considerably less than he believed it to be.
"I know it wasn't you," Archer said.
Davis looked at him, mildly surprised.
"You want to know why it wasn't you?" Archer prompted. "Because you're next."
Davis laughed. The laugh of a man who found the suggestion absurd. "Is that supposed to frighten me?"
"It's supposed to inform you," Archer said. "What you do with the information is your business."
"Boss," Rush's voice in the earpiece. "Movement on the north path. Could be nothing. Keeping eyes on it."
Archer didn't react.
Davis turned and leaned back against the railing, crossing his arms over his chest, and looked at Archer with the expression he'd likely been saving for this precise moment.
The one he'd been rehearsing, probably, since the moment Kelly's body was found, and he understood what it meant for tomorrow's board meeting.
"Your days are numbered, Archer," he said, all but the merest hint of the broad Texas accent erased. "You know that, right? A man died on your watch. In your building. Under your security. The board won't have a choice."
"They'll have a choice," Archer said. "They always have a choice."
"Not this time." Davis was enjoying this. The enjoyment was visible in every line of his face, and he wasn't bothering to hide it. "I have the votes. I've had them for a while, if I'm being honest. This just accelerated the timeline." He spread his hands. "It's over."
"It's not going to happen, Austin."
"You keep saying that." Davis tilted his head. "And yet here we are."
Archer studied him for a moment. "I'll make you a deal," he said.
Davis raised his eyebrows.
"Money," Archer said. "Enough to rebuild everything you lost. Enough to disappear somewhere comfortable and never have to worry about any of this again. In exchange for one thing."
"What thing?"
"The Curator," Archer said. "Tell me who it is. Give me a name. And I'll make sure you walk away from all of this intact."
Davis stared at him. And then he laughed, a real laugh this time, genuine and delighted, the laugh of a man who had just been handed something better than he'd expected. "You don't know," he said. "After all of this, you still don't know who it is."
"Do we want Davis taken out?" Ryker's voice in the earpiece. Quiet. Professional. Waiting.
Not yet. Archer kept his face still.
"This is your only chance to survive this, Austin," Archer said.
"I want you to understand that. Whoever is behind you, whatever they've promised you, they are cleaning house.
North. Lebowitz. Kelly. Daniela. Every single person who became inconvenient has been removed. You are becoming inconvenient."
"I'm becoming the head of the Lock and Key Society," Davis said. "That's what I'm becoming."
"You're becoming a liability," Archer said. "You've been loud and visible, and you've drawn attention to an operation that survives on invisibility. The Curator doesn't need you anymore. You served your purpose, and now you're a loose end."
Something moved across Davis's face. A flicker. Gone almost immediately, but there nonetheless. "You're trying to scare me."
"I'm trying to save your life, as much as that pains me," Archer said. "Think about Fisher."
Davis's expression shifted.
"Fisher has been pulling strings for a long time," Archer said.
"The camera push at the board meeting. The witnesses for Lisbon.
The audit request. None of that was your idea, was it?
Fisher brought it to you. Fisher positioned it.
Fisher told you how to run it." He paused.
"Who do you think put you in line for the Society's top position?
Who do you think has been managing this entire play?
You think you've been running this, Austin. You haven't. You've been run."
The silence between them grew. Archer watched Davis try to process what he was being told. Denial was winning.
"Fisher needed someone to take the chair," Archer continued.
"Someone whose name goes on the paperwork.
Someone who bears the responsibility when things go wrong.
Someone the board sees and reacts to, while Fisher operates in the background exactly the way he always has.
Invisible. Unaccountable. Pulling every string while you stand in front of the room and take every consequence.
" He let that land. "You'd be the head of the Society in name only.
Fisher would be the true head of the Society.
And you would never, not once, be able to do anything about it. "
Davis's jaw had tightened. The enjoyment was gone from his face, and something else had replaced it, something that moved between anger and uncertainty in a way that told Archer the seed had found soil.
"That's not—" Davis started.
"Think about it," Archer said. "Every major move you've made in the last year. Who suggested it first? Who brought you the information? Who told you when to push and when to wait?" He looked at him steadily. "Comes back to one man every single time. Eli Fisher. The Curator has chosen Fisher over you. You are now expendable. My guess is you won’t even live long enough to move into the Society apartment. Why keep you when you’ve been drawing attention to what’s going on? Fisher can step in now and take over. Fisher is a far more talented pawn than you’ve ever been. "
Davis was quiet. His eyes had gone somewhere far from the park.
"It doesn't matter," Davis said finally. His voice had changed. Harder. The uncertainty burned off by something that had decided not to feel uncertain anymore. "Because you won't be around to see any of it."
His hand went into his coat.
"Boss," Ryker's voice, suddenly sharp. "He's got a weapon. Do you want—"
The gun was small and dark, and Davis held it with the confidence of a man who had decided he was done talking.
"You should have taken me out when you had the chance," Davis said. "Back when the rules said you could. That was your mistake, Archer. Living by the rules when the rules were the only thing keeping you from doing what needed to be done." He shook his head. "Stupid."
Archer looked at the gun and thought about the Society in Davis's hands.
About the information he carried, the access he would have, the reach.
About a man with no guardrails and no conscience, and Fisher behind him like a fucking puppet master.
He thought about what that looked like for the world that existed beyond these walls and these rules and this park.
He thought about Tatum in a hospital bed.
He thought about a lot of things in a very short amount of time.
"Fisher is going to eat you alive," Archer said. "You know that."
"Goodbye, Archer," Davis said.
The shot and the other shot arrived so close together they were almost one sound.
Davis's expression went from satisfaction to confusion to nothing in less than a second, and then he was simply gone, pink mist and the dark shape of a coat, and then only the railing where he had been standing.
Something hit Archer.
He registered it the way you registered things when your body understood before your mind did, a force, a heat, a sudden and comprehensive wrongness spreading from his left side outward.
The railing came up to meet his hands. Or his hands went down to meet the railing. He wasn't entirely certain of the geometry of it.
"Archer." Ryker's voice in the earpiece, no longer quiet or professional, stripped of everything except the specific quality of a man who was running. "Archer, talk to me. Talk to me right now."
He opened his mouth.
"Archer."
The river was very dark below him, and the lights of the city were reflected in it in long broken shapes.
It was actually quite beautiful when you looked at it properly, and he hadn't looked at it properly in years because he was always looking at something else, always looking at the next problem, the next threat, the next thing that needed managing.
He thought about Tatum.
About the garage floor and her hand in his and the particular way she'd said I love you, plainly, without ceremony, the way she said everything when she meant it completely.
None of this had gone according to plan, he realized.
Not the timeline, not the contingency, not the exit strategy, not any of it.
Everything he'd built and prepared and accounted for had been overtaken by events he hadn't seen coming, which was not something Archer Gray did, except apparently it was…
Apparently, he was capable of being completely blindsided by a woman in a cornflower-blue sweater with dark circles under her eyes who refused to back down from anything.
He thought about telling her he loved her in a parking garage, which was not where he would have chosen to say it if he'd been planning it, but then he hadn't been planning it, and maybe that was the point, maybe that was the only way it could have happened.
Because Tatum Wellington had gotten past every planned defense he'd ever constructed, and the only things she'd reached were the unplanned ones.
He almost smiled.
He thought about what Tatum would say. She might tell him, “Mercury is in retrograde, Archer. What did you expect?”
"I'm coming," Ryker’s voice buzzed oddly in his ear. "Stay where you are. Archer. Stay where you are."
The railing was cold under his hands.
The river was very far below.
He thought, with the last of the clarity available to him, that he had told her he was coming back and he had meant it and he was going to have to find a way to make that true because the alternative was not something he was prepared to accept.
He thought: not yet.
And then the railing was gone, and the river came up to meet him, and the city lights scattered across the dark water and went out