Chapter 10: Before he closes in

I walked fast with my head down and my bag pressed against my side.

The street was busy enough that no one looked at me twice. People moving to work, to errands, to ordinary mornings that had nothing complicated inside them. I moved through all of it like I was somewhere else entirely.

Mara knew about Cassano.

I kept turning that over and it kept cutting the same way every time.

Twelve years. Twelve years of phone calls and birthdays and sitting on her kitchen floor crying about Richard while she handed me tissues and told me I deserved better. All of it stacked up in my memory like evidence of something real, and now I had to go back through every single piece of it and wonder which parts had been genuine and which parts had been watching me.

I didn't want to do that.

I did it anyway.

The drive home was a blur. I barely remembered flagging down a cab. I sat in the back with my bag on my lap and my hands pressed flat against my thighs and I did not cry, which surprised me, because I had cried over smaller things in the past year.

Maybe there was a limit. Maybe at some point the hits came fast enough that the body just stopped keeping up.

Bruno opened the apartment door before I knocked.

He had his phone in one hand and his jaw set in a way I hadn't seen before. Not angry. Something more controlled than anger. The kind of expression that meant a decision had already been made and he was now working out the steps.

"Sit down," he said.

"I don't want to sit down."

"Phoebe."

"Just tell me about the message."

He looked at me for a moment, then stepped back from the door. I came inside and dropped my bag on the counter and turned to face him.

"Cassano's message," I said. "What exactly did it say?"

Bruno set his phone on the counter and pushed it toward me.

I read it.

Richard Simpson moved the documents from their previous location sometime in the last forty-eight hours. Current whereabouts unknown. If they surface before my deadline the consequences will not be limited to Bruno Blackfield.

I read the last line twice.

Not limited to Bruno Blackfield.

"He's threatening me," I said.

"Yes."

"I have nothing to do with his money."

"Your name is on those documents. In his eyes that's enough."

I pressed the heels of my hands against the counter and looked at the ceiling for a moment. There was a small crack running from the light fitting toward the window. I had noticed it on my first day here and thought I should mention it to the agent. That felt like a very long time ago now.

"Richard moved them," I said. "Why would he move them now?"

"Because Cassano coming here spooked him," Bruno said. "Or because Mara told him Cassano had already made contact."

"So he moved them somewhere safer."

"Somewhere I can't find them."

I looked at Bruno. "Where would he put something he needed to keep completely hidden?"

Bruno was quiet for a moment. "Somewhere with no obvious connection to him. A person he trusts completely. Someone whose name would never come up in an investigation."

I thought about that.

Richard had very few people he trusted. He didn't trust easily and he didn't trust fully. He kept people in compartments, useful for one thing and kept away from everything else.

Except one person.

"His brother," I said.

Bruno looked at me. "He has a brother?"

"Daniel. They're not close publicly. Richard always acted like Daniel was an embarrassment, too quiet, no ambition. But they talked privately. Often." I paused. "Richard used to take calls from Daniel in the other room with the door closed. Which he didn't do with anyone else."

"Where does Daniel live?"

"About forty minutes out of the city. He owns a small print business. Nothing flashy."

"Exactly the kind of place," Bruno said.

"Yes."

The apartment was quiet for a moment.

Outside, a bus rolled past and the windows shuddered slightly in their frames. Someone in the apartment above was moving furniture, slow dragging sounds that stopped and started without pattern.

"We need those documents," I said.

"I know."

"Not just for Cassano. If my name is attached to a ten million dollar theft and those papers surface without context, I lose everything. The divorce case. Any protection the law might give me. All of it."

"I know that too."

"So we go to Daniel."

Bruno looked at me carefully. "It's not that simple."

"I didn't say it was simple. I said we go."

"Phoebe, if Richard finds out we went to his brother—"

"Richard is already watching this building, already using my best friend, already has my name on stolen money documents." I looked at him steadily. "What exactly is left for him to do to me that he hasn't already started?"

Bruno didn't have an answer for that.

He picked up his phone from the counter and turned it over in his hand. Thinking. Working through it the way he did, methodically, like a man laying out pieces before committing to a move.

"I know someone who can find Daniel's current address," he said finally.

"How soon?"

"A few hours."

I nodded. "Then we go tonight."

Bruno looked at me with something that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite concern. Somewhere between the two.

"You understand what you're walking into," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I understand what I'm already in," I replied. "Walking toward it is better than standing here waiting for it to arrive."

He held my gaze for a long moment.

Then he picked up his phone and made the call.

I went to the window while he talked. The street below looked ordinary. Parked cars, a woman walking a child home from somewhere, a delivery van idling outside the building across the road.

I scanned each one without meaning to.

Looking for a black car.

Looking for Richard.

Bruno finished the call and came to stand beside me.

"Two hours," he said.

I nodded.

We stood there together looking at the street and not speaking, and the silence between us was different from the silences before. Less hostile. Less careful.

It felt like two people standing at the edge of something they had already decided to jump from.

My phone lit up on the counter behind us.

Not a call. A photo.

I crossed the room and picked it up.

The image was blurry, taken from a distance, but clear enough.

It was me.

Walking out of the café on Brennan Street less than an hour ago.

No message. No caption.

Just the photo.

Richard wanted me to know he had been there.

He had watched me walk out on Mara and he had said nothing, done nothing, just documented it quietly and sent it to me like a reminder.

I see everything.

I am always watching.

There is no version of this where you win.

I set the phone face down on the counter.

Bruno was watching me.

"Tonight," I said. "We go tonight."