10. Chapter 10
Beckett
Iam looking at a bank transfer document Cole Wrenwood sent at midnight and working out whether Conrad paid the Harrow Group to protect his daughter or to surveil her, because those are very different contracts with very different implications.
The document is clean — too clean, which is its own kind of information.
Someone with access to the Wrenwood family office financial system pulled this and sanitized the memo field before sending it, which means either Cole found a version that was already scrubbed or he is more careful than I have given him credit for.
I put it on the drafting table next to the coverage map and I stand in the quiet of the loft at one in the morning, thinking.
The payment predates the first documented stalking incident by three months. This is the fact I keep returning to.
If Conrad anticipated a threat — if someone brought him intelligence about a threat before the campaign began, and he hired private surveillance to keep an eye on his daughter without telling her — then the payment makes sense as a protective measure, however badly executed.
It is consistent with Conrad's history of managing Isla's safety as a logistics problem rather than a conversation she is entitled to be part of.
But if Conrad manufactured the conditions of the threat — if the engagement arrangement was not a response to something external but a mechanism to bring Isla under managed protection before she became aware of what he had already set in motion — then the payment is not protective at all.
It is operational. And what it was paying for is not surveillance of a stalker but surveillance of his own daughter.
Both theories are consistent with what I know of Conrad Wrenwood.
I write them both on the coverage map and I stare at them for a long time.
Then I call Cole and tell him to sit on the document until I have a cleaner picture.
He is awake, which does not surprise me.
He says he has been sitting with the same two theories for three hours.
I tell him to get some sleep. He tells me the same thing.
Neither of us does.
Elias calls from my mother's at seven in the morning.
He wants to tell me about the last chapter of the book he finished last night, which is a fact he leads with before any greeting, because Elias considers the pleasantries optional when there is more important business to conduct.
I listen to him describe the ending with the patient attention of a man who does not find his seven-year-old's opinions on middle grade fiction a burden, because I don’t.
They’ll be the best eleven minutes of my morning.
The book is about a girl who discovers she can talk to birds, which Elias finds scientifically implausible but narratively compelling, a distinction he makes explicitly and that I find, privately, extremely funny.
"Dad," he says, when he has finished the summary.
"Yeah?"
"Is the lady from grandma’s magazine going to come back?"
I look at the coverage map on my drafting table. "I don't know, bud."
"She looks fun in the pictures," he says. "Is she fun?"
"She's — yes," I say. "She's funny."
"That's the same thing." He considers this. "Can she meet Marco? Marco's mom lets him have playdates now."
"Eat your breakfast."
"I already ate my breakfast."
"Eat more breakfast."
He sighs heavily, and tells me he loves me in the tone of a child who has accepted this brand of parental deflection as a permanent feature of his life, and hangs up. I sit with the phone in my hand for longer than I intended.
My son is seven years old and has known Isla Wrenwood for approximately ninety minutes, and he has already arrived at a more accurate read of her than I had after four days of professional assessment.
I am going to sit with that for a moment and then I am going to get back to work, because tonight is the gala and I have a coverage map that needs a second review.
I clock Voss the moment he enters the Hartwell Foundation gala, forty minutes into the event, in a catering uniform that does not match any entry on the staff roster Harper Waverly sent me two days ago.
He’s good. He moves through the room with the low-profile confidence of someone who has done this before — not fast or hesitant, just present in the ambient way of service staff, making himself part of the furniture.
If I hadn’t spent the last week building a file on him I might not have given him a second look.
He’s done this before, probably in environments more demanding than a charity gala, and whoever trained him knew what they were doing.
That is useful information. It tells me that the Harrow Group isn’t a boutique operation built around Conrad Wrenwood's paranoia. It’s a professional firm with professional personnel, which means professional clients. The Wrenwood contract is probably not the only one of its kind.
I key my comm to Drake. "East side, catering. Gray jacket. Don't move on him yet."
Drake's response is one click — acknowledged — and I keep my position at Isla's left shoulder while I watch Voss work the room in a pattern that isn’t random. He’s looking for something.
He moves through the cocktail area, past the foundation table, toward the east corridor near the coat check — a corridor that, according to the venue schematic, leads to a service access point and a secondary exit that isn’t covered by the Hartwell's own security team.
"Isla," I say, low. "Stay with Ivy."
She glances at me with the expression that means she has already clocked something is happening and is deciding whether to argue about it. I fight the urge to grind my teeth.
"Please," I say.
She turns back to the board member she is talking to without breaking the conversation. I move.
I get Voss against the east wall with a hand on his collar before he makes the corridor. He doesn’t reach for anything — trained, or told not to escalate, or both — and he goes still with the compliance of a man who has calculated his options and found them limited.
"I'm doing a job," he says. His voice is flat and professional. "Information gathering. That's all I was contracted for."
"The escalation," I say. "The photographs. The envelope at the benefit. The picture of my son."
Something moves in his expression. "That wasn't my brief." He says it with enough edge that I believe him, which is itself a piece of information. "I pull schedules. I document movements. Whatever else is happening, that's not coming from me."
"Who is it coming from?"
He looks at the wall behind my shoulder. "I can't tell you that."
"Can't or won't?”
He doesn't answer. Security arrives — two of the Hartwell's own team, neither of whom I trust, which is why I have already texted Drake.
I hand Voss off with instructions to hold him and make the NYPD call before any corporate lawyers enter the picture.
I watch Drake move him toward the service exit, and then I go back to find Isla.
She’s still with Ivy and the board member, champagne in hand, everything about her reads as genuine. She reads my face the moment I reach her left shoulder.
"Voss?" she says, quietly, without turning her head.
"Yes." I take up my position. "But he's not the top of it."
She absorbs this in the way she absorbs things — without visible reaction, just a small adjustment behind her eyes that I have learned to recognize as her updating her map.
The room continues around us — string quartet, chatter, four hundred people doing their best work at a charity benefit.
Isla turns back to the board member and says something that makes him laugh, and I stand at her left shoulder and think about what Voss said.
She is remarkable at this. I’ve watched her run a public appearance under active threat conditions for two hours and the only tell I’ve ever been able to find is the set of her jaw, and only because I’ve spent eleven days learning it.
She is better at this than she should be, and she is this good because she has been doing it her entire life, and that is not a thing I have fully reckoned with until tonight.
That wasn't my brief.
Someone else is handling the escalation. Someone who isn’t Voss, which means someone above Voss. Someone has been running this operation from a level that the Harrow Group's mid-tier corporate security associate doesn’t have visibility into.
I think about the two theories on the coverage map. I think about a personal account payment and a sanitized memo field and eleven months of gap. I think about the way Conrad Wrenwood looked at me in Isla's apartment and said handled like it was a complete sentence.
I’m beginning to think I know what the second theory looks like from the inside.
The gala clears at ten-thirty. Drake confirms Voss is in NYPD custody at ten forty-seven, which is efficient enough that I make a note to give him a bonus when this is over.
Isla says goodnight to Ivy in the lobby with the ease of a woman who didn’t just spend four hours running a public appearance while her security detail cornered a corporate operative in an east corridor.
She thanks the executive director. She shakes hands with two board members.
She does all of this with the patience of someone who has been doing it for a decade or more, because knowing Conrad, she probably has.
Then she is next to me at the door and the night air hits us and she says, without looking at me: "Tell me it's over. "
"Tonight's piece is over," I say.
She nods. "I'll take it."
We get in the car. After clocking the driver to make sure it’s who I expect it to be, I raise the partition of the towncar.
The city does its late-night thing outside the windows.
Drake is already running the after-action on his end.
I should be doing the same — composing notes, updating the threat file, logging the Voss interaction for the NYPD contact.
I am going to do all of that, I’m simply going to do it in a few minutes.
She turns toward me in the back seat. Takes my jaw in her hand. Turns my face toward hers.
I have been holding this at a professional distance for eleven days. I am, in this moment, done holding it.
My hand finds the back of her neck. My fingers slide into the hair at her nape—soft, loose, the waves slipping between my fingers. I pull her to me.
The kiss is not gentle. Her mouth opens under mine, hot and hungry, and I taste wine and something sweeter underneath. Her tongue meets mine, and she makes a sound against my lips—a low, frustrated noise, like she's been waiting too long and is angry about it.
I know the feeling.
She shifts, her knee pressing into the seat between my thighs, her body angling toward mine. Her hands find my shoulders, grip the fabric of my suit jacket, pull me closer. The heel of her pump digs into the floor mat as she repositions herself.
I slide my hand from her neck down her spine, feeling the architecture of her back through the thin silk of her dress.
The car takes a turn, and she sways against me, her body pressing closer.
She arches her back, pressing herself against me, and I take the invitation.
My other hand finds her waist—finally, after eleven days of keeping my distance—and I pull her across my lap.
She straddles me in the confined space, her knees bracketing my hips, her dress riding up her thighs. The hem bunches at her hips, exposing olive skin and the edge of black lace. Her hands frame my face, her thumbs tracing my jaw, her mouth never leaving mine.
I grip her hips, my thumbs pressing into the soft flesh above her hipbones.
I can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric, the subtle shift of her body as she settles against me.
The hard line of my cock presses against my trousers, and she rolls her hips once—a slow, deliberate grind that sends a pulse of heat up my spine.
The friction is maddening—too many layers between us, too much fabric, not enough skin. My thumb traces the edge of that black lace, and she shivers.
"Matt." It's a whisper, a plea, a demand. She always calls me Beckett. Hearing my name on her lips does something to me.
I hook my thumb under the lace and pull. The fabric shifts, and my fingers find slick heat. She gasps, her forehead dropping to my shoulder, her hips tilting to give me better access.
I trace her slowly, deliberately, feeling how wet she is—how ready. She's soaked, has been since before she touched me, maybe since the gala. I circle her clit with two fingers, and she bites down on my shoulder to muffle her moan.
"Quiet," I murmur against her hair. “That partition isn’t soundproof.”
She pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. Hers are dark, pupils blown wide, that sharp green reduced to a thin ring. "Then you better make it worth keeping quiet."
I slide two fingers inside her.
Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out—just a sharp inhale, her body clenching around me like she's trying to pull me deeper. I curl my fingers, find that spot, and press.
Her nails sink into my skin through my shirt. Her hips move in small, desperate circles, riding my hand, chasing something she's been denied for eleven days.
I watch her face. The way her lips part, the way her brow furrows, the way her breathing goes ragged and uneven. I feel her tightening around my fingers, her thighs trembling against mine, her whole body coiling toward release.
And I don't stop.
She comes with her face buried in my neck, her teeth pressing into my skin hard enough to leave a mark, her body shaking in my arms. I hold her through it, my fingers still inside her, feeling every pulse and flutter.
The car keeps moving. The city keeps flashing past the windows. She stays where she is, her forehead against my shoulder, her breathing slowly returning to normal. My fingers slip out of her, and I rest my hand on her thigh, my thumb tracing idle circles on her skin.
She lifts her head. Looks at me. That sharp, challenging look is back in her eyes, but there's something else underneath it now—something softer, more vulnerable. Then she smiles.
"Your turn," she says, and reaches for my belt.