Chapter 15 One Night No
Promises
Delilah
Twenty-three calls.
I stare at the screen until it stops buzzing and then I stare at it some more.
Cole's name, stacked and stacked, the notification grouping because the number got too high to display individually. The timestamp on the oldest one is yesterday afternoon four-seventeen, which would have been right around the time the shuttle reached the lakefront. He must have known something was wrong before anyone told him.
That's Cole. He always knows.
Bishop is watching me from across the table. Not saying anything. Giving me the room to feel it, which is either very perceptive or very strategic and with him I'm starting to think those are the same thing.
"I should call him," I say.
"Not yet."
"Bishop"
"Think it through first." His voice is even. Not dismissive. "You call Cole right now, from this number, and the call logs place you here. His phone isn't secure. Graham has connections. You said so yourself."
I hate that he's right.
I pick up the phone. Turn it over in my hands. Twenty-three calls and Cole's voice is in every single one of them I know what he sounds like when he's scared, that particular tightness he gets, the way his sentences get shorter when he's trying to hold it together.
"A memo," I say.
Bishop looks at me.
"A voice memo. I record it, I send it through" I stop. Think. "No. Sending creates a data trail." I look at the phone. "But I could record it. Just to have it. Just so it exists somewhere that I said I'm okay. Even if no one hears it yet."
Bishop stands up and walks to the window without being asked.
Giving me privacy in his own kitchen.
I open the voice memo app. Hit record.
"Cole." My voice comes out steadier than I expect. "It's me. I'm okay. I know you're scared and I'm sorry I'm so sorry for that part. I never wanted you to be scared." A breath. "I just needed to choose something for myself. For the first time in a really long time. And I know that sounds like a terrible excuse for twenty-three missed calls and I know you're going to be furious and that's okay. You're allowed to be furious at me." Another breath. "I'm safe. I promise I'm safe. I'll explain everything when I can." A pause that runs a beat too long. "I love you."
I hit stop.
Play it back once with the phone pressed to my ear.
His name where I said it. My voice, steadier than I feel. The pause before I love you, where for half a second, I almost said something else something about a dock and a kiss and a man I've known for thirty-six hours who just stepped to a window without being asked so I could have two minutes of privacy.
I don't say that part. Good.
I sit there with my finger over the delete button and think about what Bishop said. Call logs. Data trails. Graham and whatever city contact he has and the particular way powerful men use information like a leash.
Then I think about Cole playing this message somewhere and someone knowing he played it. Someone knowing where it was sent from. Someone being able to draw a line from his phone to this kitchen.
I delete it.
The memo disappears.
The kitchen is very quiet.
I put the phone face down on the table and press both palms flat against the wood and breathe through the particular grief of saying the true thing into a recording and then erasing it like it never happened. Like I never said it. Like Cole is still waiting for proof that I'm alive and I chose not to give it to him because I was scared of a data trail.
I'm doing the right thing.
It feels terrible.
"Okay," I say. To no one. To the table. "Okay."
Bishop turns from the window.
He doesn't ask if I'm all right. He doesn't reflect the emotion back at me and wait for me to process it. He just comes back to the table and sits and picks up his coffee and gives me the silence to find my own way through it.
I find my way through it.
It takes a few minutes. He doesn't rush it.
"The holiday crowds thin out today," he says, eventually. "By tonight the lake road will be half of yesterday. Easier to move without being noticed." He looks at me. "I can drive you somewhere. A hotel, a friend's place, anywhere you want to go. Cash. No record."
I look at him.
"You want to drive me somewhere."
"I want you somewhere safer than this property while Reyes has eyes on it."
"And if I don't want to go?"
"Delilah"
"I'm asking a real question." I tilt my head. "What happens if I say no?"
He sets his mug down. "Then you say no."
"And?"
"And I respect that and we figure out something else."
I study him. Looking for the catch the bus, the however, the gentle redirect that men use when they've already decided the answer and they want you to arrive at it yourself. The kind of management that wears the costume of respect.
I don't find it.
Which somehow makes me want to argue with him more, not less.
"I'm not going to a hotel," I say. "I don't have a card that isn't traceable and I'm not letting you pay for a room so you can feel better about parking me somewhere."
"I said cash."
"Your cash. Which still means you're handling me."
"I'm trying to keep you safe."
"You're trying to solve me." I cross my arms. "There's a difference."
His jaw tightens. Not anger the expression I've catalogued over the last twenty-four hours that means he knows I'm right and doesn't like it.
"Where would you go?" he asks. "If not a hotel. Where is there?"
"I don't know yet."
"That's not a plan."
"Neither is drive her somewhere and hope for the best."
"It's better than staying on a property that Reyes already has in his sightline."
"Is it?" I lean forward. "Because from where I'm sitting, moving me somewhere unknown and unplanned on a holiday weekend with no money and no contacts sounds like exactly the kind of decision that gets made fast and regretted slow."
"Staying is the decision that gets made fast."
"No. Staying is the decision I'm making after thinking it through." I hold his gaze. "There's a difference. You said so yourself this morning."
He opens his mouth. Closes it.
I watch him work through the fact that I just used his own logic against him and arrive at the conclusion that I did it correctly.
"I don't have anyone to call," I say, quieter. "Cole can't know where I am yet. My parents are Graham's allies right now whether they mean to be or not. I have work friends who would fold the second anyone official asked them a question." I spread my hands. "This is my radius. You're my radius. That's not nothing but it is what it is."
"Which is exactly why you should let me."
"If you say handle this, I will pour this coffee on the table."
He stops.
Looks at me.
The frustrated set of his jaw loosens. Just slightly. The corner of his mouth does the thing the almost, the almost, and then it pulls back but it got closer this time than it has before.
"I was going to say help," he says.
"Were you?"
"I was considering it."
"Mmm." I pick up my mug. "Handle and help are the same word with different lighting."
"They're not the same."
"They feel the same from where I'm sitting."
"Then maybe" He stops. Looks at the table. When he starts again his voice is different. Less managed. Something underneath the careful control that he doesn't usually let above the surface. "Maybe I'm not good at the distinction. Maybe I've been the only person responsible for outcomes for so long that I don't know how to do it with someone else in the room." A pause. "I'm working on it."
I look at him.
Really look.
At the way he said that to the table instead of to me. At the effort it cost to say it at all this man who runs operations alone and makes calls fast and has spent eight months building a life specifically designed so he doesn't have to account to anyone.
He's trying to do something different. With me. In real time. And it's uncomfortable for him and he's doing it anyway.
"That's the most honest thing you've said all morning," I say. "And you've said some very honest things this morning."
"Don't push it."
"I'm not pushing. I'm noting." I set my mug down. "For what it's worth you're better at it than you think. The part where you actually stop when I push back. Most people don't do that."
He looks up.
The kitchen goes quiet in a particular way. The marina sounds are still there an engine, voices, the ordinary machinery of a working morning but underneath them something else. The awareness that's been building since the dock. The charge that doesn't care about Reyes or Cole or data trails or one-week deadlines.
We both feel it.
We both choose not to name it.
"You should still have a plan," he says. "Somewhere you'd go if things escalate fast."
"I have a plan."
"Delilah."
"I'm staying." I hold his gaze. No performance. No wavering. "Not because I have nowhere else to go, although that's true. Not because I'm scared, although that's also true." I pause. "Because leaving feels like the wrong direction. And I've spent enough of my life moving in the wrong direction because it was easier than choosing."
He looks at me for a long moment.
The longest moment of a very long morning.
"The spare room," he says finally. Careful. An offering.
"No."
Something shifts in his expression.
"I'm not going back to the spare room." My voice is even. My chin is level. I mean every word of this. "This is my reckless choice. I'm staying tonight."
A beat.
"In your room."