Chapter 31 #2
I've never wanted to before.
I pick up my phone. Look at the name one more time.
Then I lock the screen and put it in my pocket, I stand there in the quiet of the house, in the dark, listening to the sound of everyone I love sleeping safely overhead.
Olivia is here tonight and not in the dorm. She’s down the hall. She doesn't know about the name yet. I don't know when I'm going to tell her. Or how. Or what happens after, when she looks at me with those eyes and asks me what we're going to do about it.
Because the answer right now is nothing.
And I don't know how long I can hold that line.
Three days pass.
I go to lectures. I pick Olivia up from Skyline. I sit at the dinner table and answer when people talk to me and pretend that the name on my phone isn't the first thing I think about every morning and the last thing sitting behind my eyes every night.
Today I finally have time to go see Cain. He's at his desk when I walk in. He doesn't even look up straight away, I’m not even surprised. I shake my head when he snaps.
"Shut the door."
He closes the folder in front of him, sets it to one side, and folds his hands on the desk. Then he looks at me With that steady, evaluating look that has never once made me feel like a kid and has also never once let me get away with anything.
"Sit down."
He reaches into the drawer and pulls out a file. Thicker than I expected. He slides it across the desk without a word.
I open it.
It takes me twenty minutes to read through everything.
Patrick Holt, laid out in full. Financials, connections, properties.
The network Miles found threads through here too, seven names, all linked, all protected by the same web of money and lawyers and favors owed.
The oncologist, Dr Reid, has his own section.
Three patients. Three families who couldn't fight back.
Olivia's mother was the most recent but not the first and would not have been the last.
There are photographs. I don't linger on them.
At the back of the file, there's a single page I wasn't expecting. A timeline. Dates, locations, movements, cross-referenced with phone records.
"You've had this for a while," I say.
"Yes."
"Does the timeline go back further than the envelope?” I ask.
"Yes."
I look up at him. "How long have you been building this?"
Cain is quiet for a moment. "Long enough to do it properly." He pauses. "I needed it to be airtight, Hayden. These aren't men who make mistakes. You go at them with anything less than everything and they walk, and then they know you're coming, and then everyone around you becomes a liability."
"And now it's airtight."
"Yes." His eyes don't move from mine.
I close the file and slide it back across the desk.
"The hit and run," I say, keeping my voice even. "Olivia's parents. Do you have anything on that?"
Cain looks at me for a long moment.
"I have people looking into it," he says.
Not yes. Not no. I have people looking into it.
Which tells me he knows more than he's saying. Which means he's protecting me from something, or protecting himself, or both.
I nod once. "Okay."
I stand up.
"Hayden." His voice stops me at the door. "Whatever you're carrying right now, and I know you're carrying something, don't do anything without talking to me first."
I look at him over my shoulder.
"I know the rule," I say.
"I know you know it." A pause. "That's not what I asked."
The silence between us sits there, loaded.
"I'll see you later in the week," I say, and I leave before he can push any further, he has a way that makes us talk about things we don’t want to talk about.
Olivia’s at the house when I get back.
She's in the kitchen with Lileah, the two of them at the counter with what looks like the aftermath of a baking attempt. There’s flour on the surface, a cooling rack with something on it that might generously be called a biscuit, and Lileah looking deeply unimpressed with her own work.
For a second I just stand in the doorway and watch her.
She turns, sees me and smiles.
"Hey." She crosses the kitchen and kisses me once. "How was Cain's?"
"Fine," I say. "Boring."
She searches my face for a second. I've had three days to build the wall, and I know exactly how to look like nothing is wrong.
"These are terrible," Lileah announces from behind her, gesturing at the biscuits.
"They're not that bad," Olivia says, turning back.
"They're raw in the middle."
"That's called texture."
Lileah stares at her. "It's called salmonella."
I move to the counter and steal one before either of them can say anything. It is, objectively, quite bad. I eat it anyway.
Lileah watches me. "Well?"
"Rustic," I say.
After a while, Lileah's gone upstairs and we're alone. Olivia's sitting on the counter, watching me wash up, which she always lets me do because she says I'm faster, and she's not wrong, but I also think she does it on purpose so that I do the cleaning.
"You're being quiet," she says.
"I'm always quiet."
"Quieter than usual." She tilts her head. "Since Cain's."
I keep my eyes on the sink. "Just tired."
My phone lights up on the counter beside her.
She glances down at it automatically; I see the exact moment her expression changes. The small crease that appears between her brows, and the way her breath shifts.
"Hayden." Her voice is careful now. "Why does Miles keep texting you don't open it yet?"
I turn the tap off, turn to face her, and grab my phone.
"He's working on something for me," I say. "Research. He's not finished yet."
She looks at me for a long moment. A long, searching, careful moment.
"Okay," she says quietly.
But her eyes don't veer from mine right away and when they do, it's slow. Reluctant.
Like some part of her already knows I'm lying.