Chapter 16 Jillian
JILLIAN
“Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door / Who is it for?”
— “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles
I wake up on the kitchen floor with my cheek glued to the tile. There’s a crust of dried drool at the corner of my mouth and my neck is kinked at an angle that’s going to hurt for days. My pajama bottoms are still bunched around my ankle.
He’s gone.
I know it before I even look. The window is shut, the curtain is still, and the kitchen is gray with early morning light.
Wincing, I peel myself off the floor with the help of the refrigerator as a crutch.
I wobble to the bathroom on legs that don’t feel entirely connected to my brain.
I don’t look at the shower wall. I already know what’s there.
I turn the water as hot as it goes and step in.
I scrub myself with the Byredo body wash and a washcloth until my skin is pink and raw everywhere I can reach. My neck, where his hand was. My thighs. My stomach. The small of my back. I scrub methodically, section by section.
It feels too familiar.
Because I’ve done this before.
Five years ago, in a communal dorm bathroom at three in the morning, I stood under water this hot and did this same thing.
Same scrubbing. Same order. Neck first, then down.
I remember the shower shoes I was wearing, these cheap rubber flip-flops from CVS, and the way the water ran murky gray from the mascara I hadn’t taken off before the party.
I remember thinking, if I could just get clean enough, it would be like it never happened.
It didn’t work then. It doesn’t work now.
I get out. I towel off. I brush my teeth twice.
Then I sit at the vanity in my bedroom and I put my face on.
Primer. Foundation. Concealer under the eyes, which are puffy and red-rimmed.
Setting powder. Bronzer. Blush. Eyebrows filled in, careful strokes.
Eyeshadow, neutral tones, nothing dramatic.
Eyeliner. Mascara. Lip liner. Lipstick. Blot. Reapply.
By the time I’m done, the woman in the mirror looks put-together. Professional. Sharp. She looks like someone who slept eight hours in a bed and woke up to an alarm and drank coffee while reading the news on her phone.
She looks like someone confusing things don’t happen to.
I take the R train to work. I hold my bag on my lap and I watch the doors and I don’t look at anyone and nobody looks at me.
At work, I’m a mindless robot, about as useful as the ficus in the entryway. I’m on my second cup of coffee when Doug’s door swings open.
“Pierce. Got a minute?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
I grab my notebook out of habit and cross the bullpen to his office. Doug is seated behind his desk, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, a red pen behind his ear. There’s a stack of printouts in front of him and a half-eaten bagel on a napkin.
“Close the door,” he orders.
I close it.
“Sit.”
I sit.
“Lazarev,” he says. “Where are we?”
“We’re… progressing.”
He takes the glasses off his forehead and sets them on the desk. “Do I look like a moron to you, Pierce?”
I swallow. “No, sir.”
“Good. I’m not. If I was a moron, I’d say that’s a very helpful update and send you on your way. Since I am not, in fact, a moron, I’d ask you to treat me as such and provide me with slightly more information than ‘we’re progressing.’”
I’d laugh if I had the energy, but since I don’t, I give him an uncharacteristically nervous nod and try to remember where this hell this story is at.
“Ochoa’s gone dark. Completely. He’s not returning calls, not answering Signal, nothing.
I went to the diner for our scheduled meet and he was a no-show. ”
“So he got cold feet. I told you—”
“It’s not cold feet, Doug,” I insist, leaning forward to grip the lip of his desk. “The guy was ready. He reached out to me. He had documents, he had dates, he had—” I stop myself and try to keep it simple. “Something happened to him.”
Doug picks up the red pen and taps it against the desk a few times. “Can you prove that?”
“Well… not yet.”
“Figures. What else do you have?”
“I’ve been going through the corporate filings. Lazarev Global has at least fourteen shell companies registered across three states and two offshore jurisdictions. The layering is intentional. Nobody builds a structure like that to sell real estate.”
“That’s interesting,” he says judiciously.
“It’s not, however, a story.” He puts the pen down.
“Jillian, I went to bat for you on this. In return, what you’re handing me is a missing source and some Delaware LLCs that every billionaire and their mother probably has.
Here’s what I’ve got for you: End of the year. ”
I blink. “What?”
“End of the year,” he repeats. “It’s almost December now, so that gives you about a month and change.
You bring me something I can take upstairs, something that at least suggests it leads somewhere real, and we keep going.
If you don’t have it by then, I’m pulling you off and giving it to Bartlett. ”
“Doug, you can’t—”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says sarcastically, “are you the editor now? Should we switch chairs?” Harrumphing, he leans back and scowls at me. “I can and I will. Bartlett been sniffing around organized crime for two years. He’d kill for this assignment.”
“Bartlett couldn’t investigate a parking ticket,” I snap unfairly.
Doug is unbothered. He shrugs, picks up his bagel, and takes a messy chomp out of it. “Then beat him to it. End of the year, Pierce. Clock’s ticking.”
I stand up. “I’ll get it,” I say.
“I know you will,” he says, attention firmly fixed on his bagel. “That’s why I’m not pulling you now. Just don’t let me down.”
I get home a little after seven. The walk from the subway is cold and I keep my keys between my fingers and my eyes on every shadow. The lobby is empty. The stairs are empty. The hallway is empty.
My apartment is not.
He’s sitting at my kitchen table, pale eyes watching calmly. I stand in the doorway with my bag on my shoulder and my keys still in my hand like talons.
“I couldn’t stay away,” he explains.
I close the door behind me and drop my bag on the floor.