Chapter 47: Come to me

Bruno kept his hand on the gear shift and did not move the car.

"Tell me what you are thinking," he said.

"Richard sent that message because he is scared," I said. "Not of the will or of Cole's unit. Of me." I looked at the windscreen. "Twelve years he managed me by keeping me reactive. Something happens, I respond. He moves, I adjust. He sets the terms and I spend my energy inside them." I turned to look at Bruno. "I am done being reactive."

"What does that mean tonight?" Bruno said.

"It means we do not run," I said. "We do not go to a hotel or a safe house or anywhere Richard expects frightened people to go. We go home and I mean your home. We stay there and we let him come and do his worst."

"And when he comes?" Bruno said.

"Cole's unit will be ready," I said. "Call her. Right now. Tell her Richard made contact and give her the message."

Bruno called Cole while I sat with the phone in my lap and the city dark outside the windows and the particular calm that arrives when you have stopped being afraid of something and started being done with it.

Cole answered in two rings.

Bruno read her the message word for word and she asked three questions and said she would have people in position within the hour and ended the call.

Bruno put his phone in his jacket and started the engine.

He drove without speaking and I sat beside him with my feet up on the seat and my head back and looked at the passing city and thought about a handwritten addendum on a piece of paper in a probate court.

I would have wanted you safe.

A man I had never met had looked at the shape of my life from the outside and understood it more clearly than I had been able to from the inside. He had written those words months before he died and filed them with a court and waited for the right moment to deliver them.

Twelve years late.

Still the kindest thing anyone had done for me in a very long time.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yes."

"Your father's letter," I said. "The one addressed specifically to you. I want you to read it."

"Cole's people have it," he said.

"I know," I said. "I want you to read it anyway. Tonight. Before any of this goes further." I looked at him. "Whatever he wrote, you should have it. Not as evidence. As yours."

Bruno was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

We reached the apartment and went upstairs and Bruno unlocked the door and we went in and he called Cole again and asked about the letter and she said she would send a photograph of it to his phone within the hour.

I went to the kitchen and made tea because it was something ordinary to do with my hands and Bruno came and leaned against the counter beside me and watched me make it the way he watched me do things, with that attention that never felt like surveillance and always felt like interest.

"Three point two million," he said.

"Yes."

"And a new house if I'm thinking well."

"Apparently," I said.

"How do you feel about that?"

I poured the water and thought about it honestly. "Like someone handed me back years I cannot actually have," I said. "The money is real and I am glad of it and I will use it well. But what I actually wanted was the twelve years. You cannot put those in a probate court."

Bruno took the cup from my hand and set it on the counter and turned me toward him with both hands on my shoulders and looked at me directly.

"You have everything ahead of you," he said. "The twelve years are behind you. They shaped you and they cost you and they are done." He held my gaze. "Everything from here is yours."

I looked at him.

"Including Lisbon," I said.

"Especially Lisbon," he said.

He kissed me and I put my arms around him and the kitchen was warm and the tea was on the counter going cool and outside the city was dark and somewhere in it Richard was waiting for me to be afraid.

I was not afraid.

I was standing in a warm kitchen with a man who made eggs at two in the morning and knew that a woman would not leave her cat behind and had stood between me and every difficult thing for three weeks without once making me feel like I needed saving.

I had not needed saving.

I had needed company.

Bruno's phone lit up on the counter.

Cole's number.

He answered and listened and held the phone toward me so I could hear.

"We have a problem," Cole said. "Richard is not where we thought he was. He is not at his office, not at his lawyer's, not at any location we have on record." A short silence. "He sent that message from a phone registered to Matteo Frin. Matteo's phone was found in a bin outside the holding facility an hour ago."

"He borrowed the phone before Matteo was detained," Bruno said.

"Yes," Cole said. "Which means we do not know where Richard is or what phone he is using now." Another silence. "Ms. Lambert, I need you to respond to his message."

"Why?" I said.

"Because right now responding is the only way to make him show us where he is," Cole said. "I need you to tell him you are coming. Alone. Give him a location of your choosing. Somewhere we can control."

I looked at Bruno.

He looked at me.

"Which location?" I said.

Cole named a place.

I looked at Bruno and he nodded once.

I picked up my phone and opened Richard's message and typed my reply with Bruno's hand warm on the back of my neck and Cole still on the line and the kitchen light steady above us.

I sent it and put the phone face up on the counter and we watched the screen.

Richard's reply came in four seconds.

Three words.

Don't bring him.

Bruno read it and looked at me and the corner of his mouth moved in a way that had nothing to do with amusement.

"He has been watching the apartment," Bruno said.

"Yes," Cole said through the phone. "Which means we have him."

"Ms. Lambert. Are you ready?"

Bruno was standing in the kitchen with his hand on the back of my neck. The tea on the counter between us had gone cold, but none of us cared about it. I dipped my hand into it and pushed it away.

He was watching me with that look. The one that had nothing to do with work. The one that only came out in this kitchen, in these quiet hours, when it was just us and no one else could see him like this.

“I’m ready,” I said to Cole.

But I was looking at Bruno when I said it.

He heard it. His hand moved from my neck to my face, and he kissed me once and I couldn't get my lips off his own.

I wanted more of everything that happened.

“Ready,” he said quietly, just to me.

Then the front door opened.

Cole’s voice came from the room, “You can’t go through with this, not now and not even here.”

My heart dropped.

Because if I stayed, I’d lose him.

And if I left, I’d lose myself.