Chapter 20
SYLVIE
CRICKET KEEPS HER hookah in the ammo closet.
There’s no better way to sum up my sister in one flat sentence.
Third shelf, behind a case of frangible rounds and a Kevlar vest with a hole in it.
There are coals in a glass box and four unopened boxes of shisha that I can tell were from a set.
She has been sleeping on a lemon-mint that is genuinely, unforgivably good.
I know this because I took the liberty of sampling it for her.
I’ve been out here on the balcony for two hours.
I couldn’t go back to Callen’s tonight and I didn’t want to be alone in my hotel.
I’ve had something twisty and dark growing inside me since I texted Belai back two nights ago.
I think it’s…regret? Is this the sickening feeling of betraying someone I care about?
I hate it. I can’t sit with it, so I must stay in motion.
I wandered the city until my feet hurt and then ended up at my sister’s door.
D.C. in August is a warm stew with the lid on, and even at eleven at night the air has weight to it.
It holds you down like a weighted blanket.
Their balcony is nothing special, a concrete rectangle with a railing and a plastic table and two chairs Lance definitely dragged off a curb, but it faces east, away from the monuments and the marble and all the lit-up ego of this city, and if you tip your head back and let your eyes go slack you can just about find some stars through the haze.
I’ve been finding the light speckles in the sky, between the inhales. I take another pull and hold it for so long my lungs seize. When I release it, the smoke comes out slow. It hovers in the wet air over the railing without going anywhere at all.
It’s been forty-eight hours since I left Mabel to her fate. I was honestly expecting headlines, but I have heard exactly nothing. Not on the news. Not from Vesper. Not from anyone.
The silence should feel like getting away with it.
It doesn’t.
It feels like knocking a glass off the table and waiting for it to shatter.
I checked the news at six. I checked it again at eight.
I have checked the Maryland local pages so many times in two days that my phone has started suggesting them to me, helpfully, like a waiter bringing a refill for a drink I ordered once.
Nothing. A zoning dispute. A dog rescued from a storm drain.
Twelve degrees of humidity and a photograph of a woman holding a very large tomato.
No teacher. No murder. No name.
Which means one of three things:
One—she’s alive, and she’s talking, and there is a sketch artist somewhere putting my face on paper.
Two—she’s dead, and nobody has found her yet, which is entirely possible, because who would? There isn’t a person on this earth who calls that woman on a Sunday.
Three—somebody found her and it didn’t make the news because the cops are building their case. But good luck getting any details out of a dead woman.
I kind of wish I wasn’t so theatrical about her kill. It looked like a hit. But perhaps it’ll stay anonymous. There are a lot of people in the world who wanted that woman’s head.
Callen’s called quite a few times. I told him I needed a night.
Then, another. Tonight’s the third and I can tell he’s starting to worry.
Like a good man, he’s respecting my space, but calling me every three hours on the dot, as if he’s set a systematic phone alarm that says: Make sure your girlfriend’s still alive.
I’ve answered each call. I’ve texted him.
I’ve been warm, I’ve been funny. I sent him a photograph of a cat in a shop window with a face like a disappointed accountant and he sent back four messages about it—even one where he asked if it was for sale.
That made my chest hurt. He’s ready to move forward; get a pet together.
I want that too, but we can’t. Not until I fix what he doesn’t know is broken.
He hasn’t pushed. He won’t. He said go do whatever you need to do, and I’ll be here when you’re back. I’ve had men swoon over me before. I’ve never had a man respect me like this. It’s wildly disorienting.
I’m not avoiding him. I’m holding him at arm’s length so I don’t crack with the truth, when I’m this close to solving my biggest problem.
Here’s the plan, and I’ve said it to myself so many times in the last two days that the words have gone smooth like a river-washed stone.
Finish this. Bury it. Bury all of it—the contract, the deposit, the woman who took it.
Walk back into that man’s apartment with clean hands and nothing behind me, and stand in his kitchen, and tell him I love him.
I want to be new when I say it.
I know how stupid that is. I know that I don’t get to erase all the awful things I’ve done.
But I’m trying anyway. I want it so badly that some nights I can’t breathe around it, and there’s a very small voice underneath all of this that keeps asking whether a woman is really new if that newness is structured from filthy lies.
I take another pull from the hookah and the phone rings.
Not my phone.
The phone.
I nearly go over the railing getting to it.
It’s face down on the plastic table and it is buzzing, the whole table humming with it. I lunge for it, and it’s in my hand before the second ring finishes.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I seethe.
“Mind your tone.” Salisbrie sounds the same as always. Deliberately unrushed. The raised voice is already implied, and she doesn’t have to add boom to her words to let me know it’s all maniacal and menace.
“I have news,” I tell her. “I have information. I’ve been sitting on it for weeks waiting for this phone to ring.”
“Believe it or not, Saoirse, you are not my top priority.” There’s a rustle. Something being set down, and it sounds like she’s moving farther away from whatever commotion is in the background. “Nor is the mess I hired you to clean the biggest one I currently have.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
She ignores my snark. “What news? Make it fast, I’m in the middle of something.”
“Middle of what? It’s past ten o’clock.” I ask because I’m genuinely curious. I can’t picture Salisbrie with hobbies…or friends.
A pause. I hear a door close on her end, and the noise behind her cuts by half.
“If you must know, I’m at my nephew’s graduation party. West Coast. It’s still early here.”
I stop with the hose halfway to my mouth. It goes slack in my hand.
“Nephew? You have siblings?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’m processing the fact that there are additional human beings walking this planet carrying your savage DNA. Give me a moment. It’s a lot.”
She doesn’t trip on the insult. She never trips. There’s a small sound that might be her amusement mixed with a glass being set on a table.
“My siblings are academics. Highly accomplished. Published. One of them has their name on a golden plaque at Oxford.” Something shifts in the tone, so slightly I’d have missed it a month ago.
“I have lived under that shadow for a very long time. But when I am confirmed as Secretary of Defense, that shadow becomes light.”
Really? That’s her villain origin story? A little sibling rivalry? For fuck’s sake. How many people have died because a girl in a family of high achievers needed to be the one they talked about at Christmas?
“Anyway,” she says, brisk and matter of fact. “I’m not here to gab as you girls call it. What news?” I don’t know why she’s mocking the word “gab” because I’ve never used that in my life.
I sigh, looking out at the haze over the city. It’s time to do this. I have to pull it off perfectly.
“I found the black box.”
Silence. For once, I’ve rendered her speechless.
“It has the flight data. Proof the helicopter went down intentionally.” I keep my voice level. “It exists, and I know how to get it.”
“Good girl. That is precisely what I like to hear. Well done, Saoirse. Well done indeed.” The pleasure in it makes my skin crawl.
“Wait.”
Her pitch drops thirty degrees. “I don’t like to wait.”
“Abundantly apparent.” I plant my elbows into my knees as I lean forward. “Although you certainly don’t mind keeping other people waiting, do you?” Three weeks. Three weeks of me sitting with a plan, staring at a lifeless phone, waiting for her command, like a dog with nothing better to do.
“That sharp mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble.”
“I’ve been hearing that my entire life and it hasn’t killed me yet.” I take a breath. “Here’s the new deal, Salisbrie.”
“There is no new—”
“I’m with PALADIN now.”
The silence that follows is the most satisfying four seconds of my year.
“Excuse me?”
“I met a man.” I’m smiling and I can’t stop. “He softened me. I fell in love. I’ve committed to the cause. It’s all quite beautiful, really, you’d have hated every minute of it.”
“Spare me the Nicholas Sparks feature.” The ice in her tone is indicative of her next move. “You took my money. If you don’t get the job done, you will pay for it with your life, and I want you to understand there’s not a drop of mercy in my blood.”
“Calm down. I’m still getting it done.” I stand, feeling the need to pace. “I’m just getting it done differently. Here’s what I propose.”
I’ve rehearsed this speech. In the shower, in the car, at three in the morning with my man’s arm over my ribs.
“I destroy the evidence. All of it. Your record stays clean, your nomination sails, nobody has to die.” I count it off on my fingers even though she can’t see me.
“The black box goes in the river. It’s a hundred feet deep in the channel buried in filthy silt.
Nobody is ever finding it, not in a thousand years. ”
“And the witness?”
I take a breath. “The witness is writing a book—”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“—I’m going to tell him the manuscript has to be redacted. Every name. Every date. Every detail that could be checked.”
“He’ll refuse.”