Chapter 16: Mara at the door

Bruno looked at me.

I looked at the door.

Neither of us moved for a full three seconds.

"How did she find us?" I asked quietly.

"I don't know."

That was the problem. If Mara had found us, it meant either she was better at this than I had given her credit for, or someone had told her where we were. And the only person with reason to send her here was Richard.

The knock came again.

"Phoebe, please. I'm alone. I promise I'm alone."

Bruno crossed to the window and looked down at the courtyard without touching the curtain. Then he moved to the door and looked through the peephole.

He stepped back. "She's alone."

"That doesn't mean Richard isn't downstairs."

"No. It doesn't." He looked at me. "Your call."

I got off the bed and stood in the middle of the room. My shoes were still on. My jacket was still on. I had slept like someone who knew they might need to move quickly.

"Mara." I kept my voice low. "How did you find this hotel?"

A pause on the other side of the door.

"Richard had you followed from the apartment," she said. "He told me where you were. He asked me to come and talk to you."

Bruno's expression didn't change but his jaw moved slightly.

"He sent you," I said.

"He asked me to come. I came for different reasons."

"That's a fine distinction at six in the morning."

"Phoebe." Her voice dropped further. "He's outside. Down the street. He's been there since three. He's waiting for the documents to surface and when they do he's going to do something. I don't know what exactly but I've seen that look before and so have you."

I knew exactly the look she meant. The particular stillness that came over Richard when he had decided on something and was only waiting for the right moment. It looked like calm. It felt like the three seconds before a glass hit a wall.

I looked at Bruno.

He gave a very small nod.

I unlocked the door.

Mara came in fast and I closed it behind her. She looked like she hadn't slept. Her hair was loose and her coat was buttoned wrong and her eyes went immediately to the documents on the desk.

Then they came to me.

"I'm sorry," she said. Again. The same word she had used on the phone, but bigger now, standing in the room with us.

"Sit down," I said.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Bruno stayed near the door. I stayed between them and looked at her properly for the first time since the café.

"Tell me what he said to you," I said. "Exactly."

She pressed her hands together in her lap. "He called me at four. He knew I had spoken to you. He wasn't angry about it, which was worse than if he had been." She looked up. "He said he needed me to go to you one more time. That you would listen to me in a way you wouldn't listen to him."

"What was the message?"

"That if you hand those documents over this morning, everything goes bad for everyone. For me, for you, for Bruno." She paused. "He said the people Cassano works with don't settle for money. That once it becomes a legal matter those people look for examples."

"He's trying to scare us into stopping," Bruno said from the door.

"I know that," Mara said. She looked at him directly. "I also know he's been on the phone with someone since midnight and whoever it is, it's not his lawyer."

Bruno went very still. "Who then?"

"I don't know. He took the calls in the other room. But I heard one name." She looked between us. "Sara."

The name landed hard.

Bruno moved away from the door and stood at the desk. His hand rested near the documents without touching them.

"Sara is in contact with Richard," he said. Not a question.

"As of last night, yes."

"They're coordinating," I said. "If the filings go in this morning and Sara is already in contact with Richard, they can align their accounts. Contradict each other strategically. Make the paper trail harder to read."

"Yes," Bruno said. "And Sara knows enough about Monaco to complicate any investigation significantly if she decides to."

"So we're back to Richard being untouchable," I said.

"Not untouchable," Bruno said. "Just harder."

I looked at Mara. "You said you would testify."

"I meant it."

"Then testify about the phone calls. Sara's name. The timeline of when Richard contacted you and what he asked." I held her gaze. "That's not nothing. That's coordination. That's obstruction."

Mara looked at her hands. The silence in the room was the working kind, people thinking rather than avoiding.

"He'll destroy me," she said quietly.

"He'll try," I said. "He tries that with everyone." I sat down beside her on the edge of the bed. "Mara. Look at me."

She did.

"I am furious with you," I said. "I want you to understand that clearly. What you did hurt me in ways I haven't finished counting yet." I held her gaze. "But Richard did what Richard always does. He found the place where you were most afraid and he put his foot there and he pressed." I paused. "The only way that stops is if enough people stop letting it."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Her eyes filled but she didn't let it go further than that.

"What do you need from me?" she asked.

"A written statement. Everything. The authorization you signed, when Richard approached you, what he said, what he promised, what he threatened." I paused. "And Sara's name on those calls."

"When?"

"Now," Bruno said from the desk. "We have ninety minutes before the filings go in. A supporting statement strengthens the case and limits how much Sara and Richard can muddy it."

Mara looked at him. Something passed across her face that wasn't quite trust and wasn't quite the opposite.

"Fine," she said.

Bruno set his phone on the desk and opened a document. He pulled the chair out and Mara sat down and began to talk and Bruno typed without interrupting her. I stood by the window and watched the courtyard below slowly fill with the thin grey light of early morning.

Somewhere down the street Richard was sitting in a car watching a hotel entrance and waiting.

I thought about that. About all the hours of my life that had been shaped around what Richard was doing, what Richard was thinking, what Richard might do next. Years of it. A whole marriage constructed around managing a man who had never once managed himself.

It was an exhausting way to have lived.

I was done with it.

Mara finished the statement at ten past seven. Bruno sent it directly to his lawyer with a note flagging the Sara connection. His lawyer replied in four minutes, which told me the man had not slept either.

We were as ready as we were going to be.

I picked up my phone and looked at Richard's last message still sitting there on the screen.

All you have to do is come home.

I typed back four words and sent them before I could consider the consequences.

I am already home.

Then I put the phone in my pocket and looked at Bruno.

"Let's go," I said.