27. Kira
Kira
The evening light was long over the ship canal, the bridge was lifting for some boat crossing underneath and I sat in my kitchen with my own coffee and felt like a guest in a place I loved.
I'd been home for two days. The red-eye connection had gotten me to Sea-Tac airport at dawn, and I'd taken a cab to the condo and slept eleven hours. I woke up still angry, which was at least honest. Anger I could use.
The condo was comfy, full of books, smelled like the good coffee I had made, and none of it got to me. I'd created this place to be the one spot in the world that was only mine. Now it felt like I'd let something happen that could make even this feel thin.
Nico let himself in at seven that evening.
He used his key, and normally he came in already talking, a bag in each hand, reframing my life as a menu.
Tonight he came in quietly. He set one small bag on the counter and didn't open it.
He looked at me, then Nico did something I had never seen him do, which was nothing.
He pulled out the stool beside mine and sat, and his hands, which never stopped, were still on the counter.
"You don't have to pretend you're okay," he said. "I didn't bring a lecture. I brought dumplings, and I'm not even going to make you eat them."
"That might be the most frightening thing you've said to me."
"I know." He took a deep breath. "Blaine said I'd want to fix it. I told him there's nothing to fix. You got hit by someone you trusted. You have to sit with that. You don't try to season it."
"I keep waiting to feel stupid," I said, "for the part where I let him in. I am all about not doing that, and I did it anyway. I can't even be surprised. I ran the math on him twice and stayed both times."
"You didn't stay because you were stupid. You stayed because he was worth it until he wasn't." He let that sit. "Those aren't the same. Only the second one is true."
It was, annoyingly, the most useful thing he might have said to me, and he'd sworn he didn't bring a lecture.
"That was a lecture."
"That was one sentence," he said. "A lecture has slides."
He sat with me while it got dark, and he didn't ask what had happened.
I told him anyway, in pieces, the locked file and the walkway and the flash drive I'd put in Evan's hand on my way out.
Nico didn't give me the encouraging nod, the one that means he is only waiting for his turn.
He listened to it all while I got it out.
When I finished he was quiet for a while.
Then he said, "For what it's worth, you were never the kind of person who could have done what he accused you of.
I've watched you turn down easy money that wasn't honest. He had two months to learn that about you, and he learned it, and then he flinched anyway. "
He moved his hand at last, just the smallest motion, turning my coffee cup so the handle faced me. "That's the part that's going to make you crazy. It was never about you."
He was right that it would make me crazy, the same way it had the first time at Lennox, the insult of being punished for someone else's fear.
I'd worked hard to make sure no one could do this to me.
I'd just learned that the protections I thought I had were never the weak point. The letting someone in was.
I didn't say any of that. Nico already knew it. That was what I loved about Nico.
My phone lit up on the counter. It wasn't a call, it was an email from Straits' system administrator, and I almost didn't open it, done with all of that. I hesitated, and then I went ahead and opened it. Your access has been reinstated. We apologize for the disruption.
Reinstated, like I was a magazine subscription. As if what it had cost came with a customer service line.
"They turned it back on," I said.
Nico watched my face. "That's good?"
"It means they found it wasn't me." I ran through the rest of it in my mind, and got clear, fast and cold. Someone had done what I'd refused to do and followed the access that I never touched, and found a name. "It means they found who it was."
Then the phone rang in my hand. It was Evan.
I let it ring twice while my palm went flat on the counter and my fingers tapped, once, twice, a third time, the old count coming back the second his name was on the phone. That said more than I wanted to know about how far from over this was.
I answered. I didn't say hello.
"You were right," he said. No preamble, which I'd taught him, or maybe Knox had.
"About all of it. It was Ian. The forensics are clean.
Your access is back. You told me it was Ian, in the villa, and you were right, and I was wrong about you, and I wanted to say that before anything else. You deserve to hear it first."
Ian. Of course it had been Ian. I'd said his name in that villa, and it had changed nothing. He'd set up my access himself and walked me through the request-and-approve, he'd held the gate the whole time. I'd seen it, but being right about it was worth exactly nothing.
That was the part I hadn't braced for. I'd watched Evan choose the wound in his own head over the trust I gave him. Between us we'd built Ian the perfect place to hide, Evan with his history and me with the certainty that being right would be enough.
Being cleared didn't feel like winning, it felt like I got something back but the shine had worn off.
"Okay," I said.
"And I need you in Singapore." He took a breath.
"That's real, the deal needs you, it's yours and everyone who matters knows it's yours.
But that's not why I'm calling. I'd be calling to say the rest of this even if there were no Singapore.
I'd be calling if you never built another model for me in your life. "
"Then say the rest."
"I'm sorry." He didn't dress it up. "I had a history that I never told you about, and I let it decide something it had no business deciding.
It cost you the one thing you'd told me plainly you couldn't survive twice.
You showed me who you were and I believed the scared voice in my own head instead of trusting you. There's nothing in that I am proud of."
I stood in my kitchen and let him be sorry. It was real. I could hear that he meant it, with the exhaustion in it, the hiding gone. It wasn't enough, and I was not going to pretend that it was to make it easier for either of us.
"I believe you're sorry," I said. "That isn't the same as it being okay."
"I know."
"I'm not saying it to punish you. I'm saying it because it's the reality. You made a choice that had an impact, and the impact doesn't go away because you feel it now."
"I'm not asking you to make it okay," he said. "I'm asking you to come win the deal you built. The rest I'll earn or I won't."
"Then here's what Singapore is." I heard my own voice go level, the working voice, the one I used to make my meaning clear.
"It's a job. You're my client, I'm your strategist, we walk into that room and we are the two best people in it, and you do not look at me like that while we do it. Can you hold that line?"
"Yes."
"You couldn't two months ago."
"I know what it costs now," he said. "I learn fast when the tuition's high enough."
I almost smiled. I didn't let him know it. Outside a boat sounded, low, and the bridge came down over the water.
"I'll be in Singapore. Because the deal is mine, not because you asked."
"I know the difference."
"See that you do." I hung up. I'd said what I had to say, and it was the right place to stop.
Nico had drifted to the stove, giving me space, and when I set the phone down he slid a plate in front of me without a word, which was how he asked a question.
"I'm going to Singapore," I said.
"I know, you've had that face on since the email." He let himself smile at last. "For the deal."
"For the deal."
"Sure," he said, gently, not believing me and not pushing it, and slid the soy sauce over. He left it at that.
I packed that night. My good suit and my better one, the flats I could stand in for nine hours, the model on a drive I'd rebuilt from my own backups. I'd never again leave my only copy behind someone else's lock. I packed like the professional I had always been before I was anything else to anyone.
I did not pack forgiveness. It wasn't ready, and I didn't pack what wasn't ready.
I was going to Singapore because the deal was mine.
That was true. It wasn't the only truth, and somewhere over the Pacific I'd probably have to look at the rest of it.
But it was the truth I could carry through the airport, and it would stay with me that far.
That far was all I needed for it to stay.