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“Danny!” she practically shouts, wild-eyed. “From work! You’ve met him. He only ever orders ginger beer down at the pub and always wears those weird cardigans.”
“Right, yes. Danny.” I had thought his name was Colin.
“He’s been investigating the London mafia.”
She waits for that to sink in.
I wrinkle my nose. “There is no London mafia.”
“That’s what everybody believes, yes.”
“If there were a violent crime syndicate working out of London, people would know.”
Becks looks at me with contempt, which I hate, because we’ve never been like this.
“Are you really going to sit there and tell me that the intelligence that Danny has been gathering over months is all a big, made-up story? A huge, complicated fabrication? And what? He’s just made it all up and is just pretending to be an investigative journalist? You think our chief editor is just letting him?—”
“Okay,” I say, widening my eyes at her. “Sorry. It just seems … I don’t know. Paranoid. Like a conspiracy theory.”
“Well, it’s not,” she snaps. It hurts, and when she sees it on my face, she takes my hand. “Sorry. I don’t want to upset you. But you need to take this seriously.”
“Take what seriously? You haven’t even said anything. What does Alistair have to do with this?”
She looks at me for a while, then gulps her coffee. She’s manic.
I scoff. “You’re saying he’s in the mafia. The fucking mafia, Becks?”
“Do you honestly think that I would have brought this to you if I wasn’t one fucking hundred percent sure that he’s involved?”
“How involved?” I press.
She looks at me as if I’m mental. “Does it matter, Ives? Does it fucking matter how involved he is?” She lowers her voice and hisses through clenched teeth. “It’s the fucking MAFIA.”
I ogle how she’s clutching her cup—as if she wants to smash it. When my eyes travel back to hers, she looks sad.
“Fuck. Fuck!” she says, and a few people turn to give her disapproving looks. “It’s too late, isn’t it? I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in the way you’re failing to respond to this key information. It’s too fucking late. Jesus Christ.”
More dirty looks, but neither of us care. They should be glad we haven’t started smashing crockery. Becks’s words blare like an alarm bell.
It’s too fucking late.
“What do you know?” I ask.
“Well, Danny’s being an absolute bloody asshole about it. Doesn’t want me to know too much. Doesn’t want to reveal his sources.”
“Fair enough,” I reply.
“Fair enough?” she exclaims. “Will you stop being so fucking calm? Will you say something, like really say something?” she demands.
I’m probably in shock, and emotionally burned out from earlier. “What do you want me to say?”
She’s grinding her teeth, and I have the feeling that she is so frustrated that she wants to flip the table over. Instead, she slams her palms down, spilling my still-full coffee in the process.
“I’m not trying to antagonize you,” I say. “You’re my best friend and I love you more than life itself. You know that.”
She nods.
“We can’t both freak out at the same time. That won’t help anyone.”
