Chapter 45
Iused to find it odd when witnesses were interviewed about an event and all saw the same thing unfold, all with differing recall and detail.
So, you are saying the blue sedan struck the red truck; is that how it happened?
Yes, sir. While another would insist the truck was at fault, only the truck wasn’t red; it was silver.
Everyone present, the same scene unfolding at high speed before their eyes, and their brains pulled on threads it considered important.
Where some will focus on the collision, who had the right of way, or who ran a light, others hone in on the damage and any injuries that might need tending to.
There is sometimes a person who focuses on the irrelevant details happening at the periphery prior to the event.
Who was standing at the curb waiting to cross the road?
What were they wearing? Did they have any part to play when the truck struck the car, or vice versa, if the first witness is to be believed?
Only time and a thorough investigation help eke the important from the irrelevant and the facts from the fiction.
The truck and car collided because the pedestrian in the red dress stepped off the curb and into the path of both.
By the time I drag a bloodied Mason to his feet, Sabrina and my jacket are both gone.
He remains belligerent and unapologetic, both to me and a seething Isaac Grenfer standing next to his father, Abe.
Abe sat by the bar for most of the evening, content to sip soda water and avoid the spotlight shining on multiple beacons of industry in the room.
Billionaires, network executives, tech squillionaires whose brilliant minds and nurtured visions gave us hardware, software, and the cell phones we thrive on for our hourly dopamine hits from social media acceptance as some quirky precursor to relevance.
Abe wanted to meet with Mason, Bri, and I during the next intermission to ink the deal he’d hoped would be as fruitful as his television career.
He came to the event pen in hand to sign in Mason’s presence.
Zac had beguiled his father with relatable stories of tin can potlucks and a woman who worked incredibly hard to make life better for those around her.
A woman who had a sound sense of family and faith, who pointed the spotlight toward her colleagues at Mercer Media at the expense of her own praise.
Sabrina Broe was a distinct juxtaposition to Juliette Nasta-Vrees and Fenkels.
Isaac was uncomfortable with Jules’s constant flirting and touching.
He had found the woman difficult to work with, dismissive of those around her, and her social media outbursts and posts were divisive and acerbic.
As such, both Grenfers thought it wiser to bypass Fenkels altogether, committing the pilot and spin-off programs to Mercer Media and subsidiary companies only.
Abe was a principled man; hell, they both were.
They wouldn’t turn a blind eye to Seth Fenkel’s open-secret adultery or Juliette’s barely veiled bigotry and blatant social climbing.
Should Mercer cut Fenkel from the deal and allow Bri and I to oversee the burgeoning relationship, then Abe would produce his own bespoke ballpoint and seal any adjusted deal.
Now that deal, months of work and research, was shot to shit.
Not only that, but Mason has also destroyed Sabrina in the most humiliating, public way. Fuck, FUCK!
Our elevator car lands on the level for the suite, Mason’s breathing has returned to a somewhat normal, clunky rasp.
His nose is broken. It doesn’t look as bad as mine did fifteen years ago, but it’s still a mess.
Expelled air whistles in short clips as the interrupted passages protest their new directions.
Blood pools onto his crisp shirt in heavy droplets, thick and pungent.
They spread across his chest before disappearing under the coal black of his vest and hidden from view.
If only life’s metaphorical blood spatter was so easy to hide.
I’m angry. No, I’m fucking furious, with him and myself.
To a nuclear level I don’t think I’ve experienced before.
Not when Mason punched me or rejected me.
“Do you know what Zac and Bri were looking at on his phone this afternoon? What was so outrageously inappropriate and tipped you from soulless husk to raging ogre?” A callous laugh bubbles up my throat and escapes across my tongue.
“You want to know if all this was worth it?”
Mason remains propped against the wall while I pat down my vest and realize the key is missing.
I don’t have it. It was in my jacket pocket.
Fuck. I approach the nearest security and demand a card sent up urgently, while Mason continues to smear deep red lines against the patterned paper where he leans.
“What?” His head lolls to the side, studying me. His eyes, usually as pristine as the rest of him, are a mass of broken capillaries, the delicate skin under each now darkening in the first stages of mottled bruising.
“Bri’s gran, the one in and out of hospital. Uta, I’m pretty sure her name is?”
His shoulders shrug almost robotically. He either doesn’t remember, or that punch to his face has rattled him more than he’s letting on.
“Abe arrived this afternoon and recorded a video message. Not audio, a video, and in it he said how much he was looking forward to meeting Uta if she was anything like her lovely granddaughter. He invited her to come sit in the studio when the first episode is recorded. A video and invitation from Abe Grenfer, and here you are instigating a dick-measuring contest with a guy you are supposed to be working with. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Everything.” His head continues to roll from side to side against the wall.
Blood drops sway and splatter like a sprinkler.
A new keycard is pressed into my palm, and I hold it to the reader, leaning on the door as the light changes from red to green.
I usher Mason inside and close the door behind us as concerned security fall into place on the other side of it.
With the lights flicked on, the first thing I notice is the phone, face up on the end table beyond the sitting area and bedrooms. Her phone.
When Mason staggers over to it, I jog down the hallway and throw the door to the second bedroom open.
The bed is turned down, the room showing no sign of the storm that may or may not have rolled in.
It’s when I glance into the wardrobe, to the space where her bag would have been, and no sign of her sketch pad, the bulky item she insists on carrying everywhere with her, that the true extent of the post-tempest damage is clear.
Sabrina is gone, and she’s not coming back.
As we approach Onyx One, my heartbeat quickens. “I’ll drop you out front. You go up and look for her while I park. Now that she’s without her phone, we have no way of knowing where she is. Mas, I think the last place she wants to be is anywhere near you, but it’s worth a try, right?”
“What do I say to her? This is all my fault. Fuck!” His throat moves on a swallow that’s difficult. The muscles of his neck bulge as he moves. Whatever he’s struggling with, he manufactured himself.
“It is your fault. You created some ridiculous notion that she was cheating on you and leveled up, or down, more accurately, into a place of brutal horror that I never thought you capable of. What I saw last night, Mason, was something I’d expect Michael, Mitch, or Magnus to do, but not you.
And never to Sabrina. Everything you asked of her, she did for you.
She never faltered, not once. The accusation of cheating alone would be hurtful, but you didn’t cross a line, you erased it.
I pray to anything and everything out there that you haven’t just erased her from our lives, asshole. ”
He scrubs his jaw with a palm and winces. Yeah, that’s got to hurt too. “Be honest. Apologize. Fuck man, tell her how you feel because you may never get another chance. Go, Go!”