11. Julian #2
He set the glass down. He pulled out his wallet and laid a $100 bill on the table without looking at it. He stood. He put his coat on.
"Walk me to the train, Julian. The rain has let up."
I walked him to the train. He hugged me on the platform. He held me by the shoulders and looked at me for a second. He said, "Take care of yourself, son." He got on the train. The doors closed. He was gone.
I stood on the platform for a full minute after the train had left.
I walked home in the rain. Forty minutes of relief I had not felt in a year.
He had used my name. He had used the son. He had asked about Thea. He had ordered the second round.
He had said Whitlock? before I had said the name.
Three years ago I had walked across town in the rain to ask one man one question and I had walked out forty minutes later having handed him the only piece of intelligence he needed.
Declan, Nolan and I had a door but did not have a key, and that nobody at the Vanguard understood yet what we had found.
He had used the time.
I put my hands flat on the desk. I lifted them. I put them flat again. I stood up. I crossed to the window and put my forehead against the cool glass and tried to make my breathing even.
I stood up and went home. Thoughts of Conrad and Vanguard kept circling my thoughts.
I picked up my phone. I pulled up Declan's name. My thumb hovered.
I put the phone down.
Declan would want to act. Nolan would want to contain. Either way, by morning Conrad would know I had moved, and moving without a full hand was how people disappeared. I did not yet know what I had.
I picked the phone up. Put it down. Picked it up again.
I thought about who was left.
Claire was not in the architecture. She was not a partner, not a principal, not a name Conrad would flag as a threat. She was a woman who worked for me and who had kissed me at a railing and pushed me away in my office.
She did not know any of this. That was the only thing tonight that felt like safety.
I called her.
She answered on the second ring.
"Are you home?"
"Yes."
"Can you come over?"
A breath. A second.
"I know what that sounds like, Claire. I am not asking for that. I just don't want to be alone right now and you are the only person I want to call."
A longer pause.
"Send me the address."
She came in thirty minutes.
She had on jeans, a black T-shirt, her hair pulled back at the nape — the running version of her, dressed for going out late on a Monday because someone had asked her to.
She stood in my doorway with her bag on her shoulder and her gray eyes on my face and clocked the apartment behind me in two seconds — the records on the shelf along the far wall, the sketches on my desk I had not had time to put away, the glass of whiskey on the kitchen counter I had poured an hour ago and barely touched.
"You have a lot of records, Julian."
"You have a lot of opinions about them."
The corner of her mouth moved.
She walked in. I closed the door. She crossed to the desk where the sketches were spread on the corner. She did not touch them at first. She looked. Then she picked one up — the twelve-story building with too many windows — and held it carefully at the corners.
"This is beautiful."
"It's a building that doesn't exist."
"That doesn't mean it's not beautiful."
I leaned against the kitchen counter.
She turned the page in her hand. She set it down. She picked up the bridge.
"You always draw too many windows."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
She set the bridge down. She turned to face me with her hand still on the corner of the desk.
"Tell me about the beginning, Julian. The Vanguard. What was it like in the early days."
Her voice was light. Her gray eyes were on the sketches.
I answered. The studio in Murray Hill. The legal pads on the floor. The forty hours I had been awake when the regulatory bond went through. The first office above the deli on Lexington.
She picked up another sketch.
"Did you build it alone?"
I looked at her.
She was still looking at the drawing in her hand. Calm. Like the question was a conversation.
"No. I had a mentor."
Something moved across her face. Fast. A piece fitting somewhere in her head where I could not see it. It was gone.
She set the sketch down. The corners aligned with the others.
I crossed the floor to her.
"Claire."
She turned.
"I'm in trouble. I can't tell you what kind. But I need you to know that I'm not who you think I am, and I'm not sure I'm who I think I am either."
She looked at me for a long second.
"What do you need, Julian?"
"I need you to stay."
She stayed.
We sat on the couch with the vinyl turning low — Bill Evans, the album I put on when I did not have words. She was beside me, close but not touching. I poured her a whiskey from the bottle on the side table and our fingers brushed on the glass and neither of us pulled away.
I talked. Not about Conrad. Not about the investigation.
About my mother. How she had worked two jobs and made sure I had never felt poor.
How she had died of pancreatic cancer four months before Vanguard's first regulatory approval came through, and I had not taken a single day to grieve because stopping had felt like falling.
She listened. She did not interrupt.
When I finished I looked at her. She was looking at me.
I reached out. The pad of my thumb tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear, and ran along her jaw on the way back. She leaned into my hand.
"Claire."
She closed her eyes.
She closed them like the name hurt. I did not know why.
I kissed her.
Slow. My hand on her jaw, my thumb on her cheekbone.
She kissed me back and this time she did not push me away.
Her hands came up to my chest, then my shoulders, then the back of my neck.
I pulled her in. She moved into my lap. Her knees on either side of me, her hands in my hair, her mouth open against mine.
I ran my hands up her back under the sweater. Her skin was warm against my palms. She arched into me and made the sound.
I pulled back just enough to look at her.
Her gray eyes were dark. Her lips were swollen. She was breathing hard.
"Stay."
"I shouldn't, Julian."
"I know."
She kissed me again. Harder. Her hands pulled at my shirt. My hands found her hips through the denim. She whispered against my mouth.
"Take me to bed, Julian."
I stood up with her legs around me and carried her down the hallway, and we did not talk again for a long time.
She was asleep when I got up.
The light from the hallway fell across her shoulder where the sheet had slipped to her waist. Her dark hair was spread across the pillow. I sat on the edge of the bed for a second and traced the line of her shoulder with one finger. She stirred. She did not wake.
I pulled on sweats. I walked to the kitchen for water.
My phone was on the counter where I had left it.
The screen was lit. A notification. An email from an address I did not recognize. No subject line.
I opened it.
A photograph. Then another. Then another.
Me leaving the Vanguard offices on a Tuesday last week. Me at the park on Saturday morning with Claire on the path beside me. Me walking into the restaurant for Declan's dinner two weeks ago. Me and Claire on the sidewalk outside the gala.
Every photo from across the street or from a car window. Long lens. Patient. Professional.
The last photo was from tonight.
My building. The lobby. The doorman behind the desk.
Claire walking through the front door.
Underneath the photographs, one line.
Last warning.