Chapter Sixteen #3
No one moved. It was quiet as a crime scene, which, technically, it now was.
Jude was at my elbow, quiet and focused, pulling the sleeve up on my forearm. His hands were shaking, but the touch was sure. “Let me see,” he said, and I let him. The cut was superficial, but already swelling, a purple welt under the skin.
“It’s fine,” I said.
He looked at me with an expression I had never seen before—anger, sure, but mostly something like awe. Like he had expected to be left, or to have to take the hit himself.
We stood like that until the police arrived, the four of us arrayed like survivors at a wake. The officers were efficient and uncurious, took statements, photographed the paperweight and the bruise, took the evidence Miles handed over, and left with Carolyn and Vance in tow.
When the door closed, the apartment felt suddenly hollow.
I looked at Jude. “Ready?”
He nodded, and for a moment I thought he was going to say something profound. Instead, he just said, “Let’s get pancakes,” and I realized he was still, underneath everything, Jude.
Miles met us at the elevator. “You know this isn’t the end, right?” he said.
I smiled, and it hurt, but it felt good to hurt for once for something real.
“It’s over for her,” I said, and for the first time since any of this began, I actually believed it.
The elevator doors opened, and we rode down together, the city laid out below us in squares of gold and gray, the future arriving one floor at a time.
* * * *
The penthouse was almost unrecognizably quiet after the three of us returned.
Miles left after a brief, stiff handshake—he was not one for debriefings, and besides, there was paperwork to do and statements to be filed.
Jude and I sat on the living room floor, backs against the couch, neither of us really ready to be in a bed yet.
He ate his pancakes with the slow, deliberate efficiency of a man who had decided that blood sugar was the best defense against thinking.
I poured whiskey into my coffee, which was pointless, but I did it anyway.
The city outside was dark, all the lights smeared by a rain that had started during the confrontation and now pattered against the glass with the soft, unmusical insistence of someone knocking at a locked door.
It was almost midnight when my phone buzzed with a message from Miles. Short, to the point: “Edward is safe. He wants to meet.”
I nodded at Jude. He nodded back. Neither of us said anything, but we both understood.
We met Edward at his favorite bar, a narrow, wood-paneled place that had never gotten trendy enough to change in the last twenty years.
He was already there when we arrived, in a booth at the back, two fingers of gin untouched in front of him.
His tie was off, hair mussed, eyes red at the edges in a way that did not come from drink.
He stood when we approached. “Mr. James,” he said, and then, to Jude: “Mr. Thomas.”
I sat down. “You don’t have to call me that, Ed. Not tonight.”
He smiled, a flicker, then sat. “Miles said you’d want to hear it from me.”
I let him talk.
The story was not complicated, in the end.
Six years ago, he’d made a mistake: a shell company, a tax move that was legal, but would have been humiliating if it came to light.
Carolyn had found it—how, he did not know, but she had—and she’d kept it in her pocket until the moment it was useful.
When the Pryce offer appeared, she called it in, and he did as she asked.
Not for money, not for revenge, but because he was afraid, and ashamed, and because sometimes fear was the only real motivator left.
He looked at me. “I’m sorry, sir.”
I believed him. I also understood how Carolyn had found him. She had a talent for smelling blood.
Jude spoke first. “She would have done the same to anyone,” he said. “You’re not the reason this happened.”
Edward shook his head. “Doesn’t make it better.”
I looked at him, at the man who had carried the details of my life for more than a decade. “You didn’t have to tell me, Ed. You could have run.”
He smiled again, this time a little sadder. “Not my way.”
I nodded. “We’ll get you a good lawyer. But there’s not going to be a case. You’re going to be fine.”
He looked like he might argue, but he didn’t. He just lifted his glass and took a long drink. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll clear out my office.”
I shook my head. “You don’t have to. I’ll see you on Monday.”
He looked at me for a long moment, searching for the lie in it. When he found none, he nodded, once, and the relief in his face was almost enough to undo me.
Jude and I left together, walking out into the wet city, the smell of gin and rain and forgiveness in the air.
At home, he curled against me, head on my shoulder, and we sat like that for a long time, listening to the hush. At some point, I realized I wasn’t angry anymore, not at Edward, not at Carolyn, not even at myself.
Jude’s hand found mine. We sat in the quiet, not speaking, the future arriving just one minute at a time.