Chapter 39: When Harlan talks

Luca came out of the building and bent to the car window.

"Harlan is talking," he said. "Everything. The judge who processed the bail. The contact inside the investigators office who flagged our filings to Richard. The account Reeves used to receive payments." He looked at Bruno. "He has been on record for two hours and he has not stopped."

"Where is Richard?" Bruno said.

"Harlan says he does not know. Says Richard put him on the boat and told him to wait and never came back." Luca straightened. "I do not believe him on that point. But everything else he is giving us is verifiable and it is a lot."

"Enough to dismantle the case Richard built inside the investigation?" I said.

"Yes," Luca said. "And the forty million claim against you. With Rosa's statement and Harlan's testimony the grounds for it collapse. I can have a judge review it by Thursday."

"Two days," I said.

"Two days," Luca said. "Go home. Both of you. I will call when there is something worth calling about."

Bruno did not move immediately. He stood on the pavement with his hands in his pockets and looked up the street.

"He is still in the city," Bruno said. "Richard does not leave until he has finished what he started."

"The claim," I said. "He filed it to keep me trapped. He will not leave until he knows whether it worked."

"Then let him watch," Luca said. "Let him wait. Thursday the claim falls apart and he has nothing left to watch for." He looked at Bruno. "Go home."

We got in the car.

Bruno drove and I sat with my window down two inches and the cold air coming in and the city moving past and neither of us spoke for a long time.

He parked outside his building and we went upstairs and he unlocked the apartment and we went in and he dropped his keys on the table and stood in the middle of the room.

"Two days," he said.

"Two days," I said. "And Lisbon in four."

He sat on the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his head down and I sat beside him and put my hand on his back and left it there.

He was quiet for a full minute.

"He bought my father's house," he said.

"Yes."

"The week I sold it I was in Geneva. I handled everything through a broker. I never saw the buyer's name." He looked at the floor. "Richard walked through every room in that house. He knew the stairs. He knew the kitchen. He knew the back garden where my father used to sit on Sunday mornings." He stopped. "He knew all of it before he ever came near me."

I kept my hand on his back.

"He chose you deliberately," I said.

He chose you years before any of that because your father's house gave him something. A connection and a leverage point he could build from."

"What did my father have that Richard wanted?" Bruno asked.

"I don't know yet," I said. "But Luca will find it. The emails on Reeves's phone. The Geneva law firm. It is all there and it will come out."

Bruno sat up and looked at me.

"I have been so focused on clearing my name from Monaco," he said. "I never looked further back than that."

"Richard counted on that," I said. "He always counts on people looking at what he shows them and not at what he hides behind it."

Bruno looked at me for a moment.

"You understand how he works better than anyone," he said.

"Twelve years," I said. "I had a long time to learn."

He took my hand from his back and held it properly between both of his and looked at it and then at me.

"After Thursday," he said. "After the claim falls and Luca has everything filed and Rosa's statement is on record." He held my gaze. "I want one week where neither of us says his name."

He held my hand and we sat on the couch in the quiet apartment and outside the window the city moved through its evening and the light went from amber to grey to the particular blue of a city night and neither of us moved to turn a lamp on.

His phone rang on the table.

Bruno answered and listened without speaking for forty seconds.

I watched his face.

"When?" he asked.

He listened again.

"Where?" he asked again.

He ended the call and set the phone on the table and sat with it under his hand and did not look at me immediately.

"Bruno," I said.

He looked up.

"Richard walked into a police station twenty minutes ago," he said. "He turned himself in."

I stared at him. "Why would he do that?"

"Because he wants to control the narrative," Bruno said. "He walks in voluntarily, his lawyers frame it as cooperation, and he gets ahead of whatever Harlan has said."

"He is still managing it," I said. "Even now."

"Yes," Bruno said. "But Phoebe." He looked at me directly. "He did not come alone."

I waited.

"He brought someone with him," Bruno said. "Someone who has been with him since she walked out of the hotel room with the investigators three weeks ago."

"Sara," I said.

"No," Bruno said.

He said the name quietly and the both of us turned.

A name that had no business being inside any of this.

A name that meant Richard had not been running at all.

Bruno put the phone down on the table and looked at me and I looked at him and the name sat between us in the quiet room like something neither of us wanted to pick up.

"How?" I said.

"I don't know," Bruno said.

"How long?"

"Luca does not know that either," Bruno said. "What he knows is that she walked in beside Richard with his lawyer on her other side and a statement already prepared."

I stood up from the couch.

I crossed to the window and looked down at the street below and the city going about its evening and the ordinary people moving through it with their ordinary lives and their ordinary problems that had nothing to do with any of this.

"She was never on our side," I said.

"We don't know that yet," Bruno said.

"Bruno." I turned from the window. "She walked into a police station beside Richard. Voluntarily. With a prepared statement." I looked at him. "What side does that look like to you?"

He said nothing.

"She called me from a locked room," I said. "She gave us Voss. She gave us the airfield. She told us about Reeves." I pressed my fingers to my eyes for a second. "Was any of it real or was it Richard feeding us exactly what he needed us to know to move us where he wanted us?"

Bruno stood.

He crossed to me at the window and stood in front of me and put both hands on my face and made me look at him.

"Listen to me," he said. "Whatever she is doing in that police station right now, it does not change what we have. Rosa's statement. Harlan's testimony. The emails on Reeves's phone. The metadata on the forged documents." He held my gaze. "Richard walked into that station because he is out of moves. Not because he has found new ones."

I looked at him.

"Then why bring her?" I asked.

Bruno had no answer for that.