Chapter 32: Get the envelope

The message had no contact name attached to it.

Bruno read it over my shoulder and sat up in the bed. I sat up with him and we looked at the screen together in the dark room.The marina was empty. He was already gone. But he left something for you.

Bruno took the phone and called the number back. It rang six times and cut to nothing. He tried again. Same result.

I went to the window and looked down at the street.

"Someone warned Richard about the marina," I said. "Before the investigators got there."

"Reeves," Bruno said. "He had the location the moment we gave it to the investigator on the phone."

"The phone we found cracked on the road."

"That call was intercepted," Bruno said. "Someone was listening." He set my phone on the bed and looked at me. "Richard was already on the water before anyone arrived."

The phone vibrated again from same number with photo this time.

A wooden dock and a single light on a post at the end of it. It was tied to the post with cord was a brown envelope.

"He left something," I said.

"Or he wants us to think he did," Bruno said. He looked at me across the dark room. "Stay here. I'll go."

"No."

"Phoebe"

"Bruno." I held his gaze. "Every time I stayed somewhere and waited, Richard moved three steps ahead. I'm done staying."

He looked at me for a long moment. The lamp was off and the only light came from the street below, and it caught the side of his face and made everything quiet and close.

He crossed the room and stood in front of me and put both hands on my face and kissed me, slow and certain, the kind of kiss that had nothing to do with the marina or the envelope or Richard and everything to do with the two of us in a warm room at one in the morning.

When he pulled back he kept his hands on my face.

"I know you're done staying," he said. "I just needed a minute before we go back out there."

"Take your minute," I said.

He pressed his forehead to mine and we stood like that in the dark room with the city quiet outside and his hands warm on my face, and for sixty seconds nothing required anything from either of us.

Then he stepped back and picked up his jacket.

We went downstairs and got in the car and he drove south through empty streets. He put his hand over mine on the seat and I turned my hand and held his, and we drove like that through the dark without pretending it was anything other than what it was.

The marina appeared: a low car park, a wooden gate, a row of lights along the dock running out into black water.

Bruno parked and cut the headlights. Nothing moved. No other cars in the lot, no figures on the dock, no sound except water moving against the hulls of moored boats.

We walked the length of the dock together.

At the end Bruno untied the cord from the post and turned the envelope over. My name on the front in Richard's handwriting. The neat, precise letters I had watched sign documents and birthday cards and legal papers for twelve years.

I opened it.

A single letter inside it handwritten on two pages.

I read the first line and went still.

Bruno read it beside me with his shoulder pressed against mine, warm and solid in the cold night air.

By the time you read this, you already know about Reeves. What you don't know is that Reeves has been working for me for four years. Last week I gave him something to hold. Something that cannot be unfiled or withdrawn. Something with your name on it that will surface automatically if I am convicted.

I turned the page.

A court document. Filed six days ago. Before Sara, before Margaret, before the airfield. A civil claim with my name listed as co-defendant.

Forty million dollars.

Bruno took the page from my hands and read it. When he looked up I was already looking at him.

"He filed this before we found the folder," I said.

"Yes."

"He knew Margaret was coming to us."

"He's been watching his own mother," Bruno said.

The water moved against the dock below us and the rope on the nearest boat pulled and released in a slow rhythm, and the post light held its small circle on the wet wood.

Bruno put the document back in the envelope and tucked it inside his jacket and turned to me.

"Hey," he said.

I looked at him.

He put his arm around me and pulled me in and I put my face against his neck and his other arm came around me and he held on properly, both arms, the kind of hold that did not perform comfort but simply gave it.

"He built this before any of our moves," I said into his collar.

"Yes."

"Which means he was always three steps ahead."

"He was," Bruno said. "Until tonight he was." He pressed his mouth briefly to my hair. "He's not ahead anymore. He's running."

I pulled back and looked at him.

"Running men make mistakes," he said.

"Richard doesn't make mistakes."

"He made one," Bruno said. "He underestimated how far you'd go." He held my gaze. "He built everything around the version of you that stayed quiet and managed things and didn't push. That woman is gone."

I held his gaze for a moment.

Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.

A call.

Margaret Simpson at two in the morning.

"He was here," she said. "Richard. An hour ago." Her breath was loud. "He took the copies I kept back. He found them."

"He had someone with him. A woman. Dark hair. Late thirties."

Bruno said Sara's name before I could.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yes."

"After all of this is finished," I said. "The court document, Reeves, Sara, all of it. When it's done."

"Yes."

"I don't want to talk about Richard anymore," I said. "Not to lawyers, not to investigators, not to anyone. I want to go to Lisbon and find that studio and paint badly and eat well and come home to you every evening."

He looked at me for a long time watching to know if I would blink my eyes.

"That's the plan," he said.

"Promise me."

He took my face in both hands. "I promise you," he said. "Lisbon. The studio. Every evening." He held my gaze steady. "All of it."

He kissed me once more, it was intense and when he pulled back he was already reaching for my hand.

We walked back up the dock together.

We were halfway to the car when a man stepped out from between two moored boats to our left.

This man was built so well physically.

" I won't repeat whatever I say here now"

He looked at Bruno directly.

"Cassano wants the envelope," he said. "Now."