He reaches for his phone while I hide my consternation in my coffee mug. Thank God for his inability to go a few minutes without checking his email.
“Booked in for La Perla at eleven,” he says a minute later.
Double-shit.Nothis email then.
“And there’s plenty of places for a nice lunch on Madison Avenue,” he adds.
It can’t be too late to get out of this.
“Alex… I’m not sure I want to do that today,” I try. “I’m still sore from last night.”
“You’ll be fine,” he says bracingly, trampling over my concerns. “I’m looking forward to it now.”
Great. That’s our day fixed, set in stone, as consensual as everything else we’ve done.
Maybe I can throw his mood off with theotherthings we need to talk about.
“So… um… how did you know that Van Wyk was going to take your finger?”
There’s no hesitation, no unguarded tensing, but he does drink some coffee before he answers. “What do you mean?”
“When you saw the knife there was no reaction. And your next words were, ‘the desk or the table.’”
He tilts his head. “When were you going to tell me you investigated Northbridge Capital?”
I go still, my pulse jumping.
He’s just deflected a question about his secret to ask another aboutmine—but it’s not even a secret. Hethinksit is, that’s why his mind went there. I’d have told him if he wanted to know. Hell, I assumed hedidknow: it was for the arbitration where we met.
But that’s not the point. The point is that he’s accusing me of… what… being disingenuous?
Which means he is.
“It was a while ago,” I say carefully. “Before we met.” And I hadn’t even given it any thought. It was dry, just the necessary process to understand the opponent. That’s all I was hired to do, through Dalton Reed Consulting, my previous company. Franklin gave me that job.
Why has it even come up?
“What are you investigating now?” Alex asks, all casual, when he’s never in his life shown an interest in my work.
I pull the duvet up higher, balance my coffee cup on my thigh, and keep my tone level. “A construction company. They have an expenses fraud case.” That’s twice I’ve used that lie, but I never thought I’d be talking to Alex the same way I spoke to Van Wyk. I’m not sure why I’m even lying, save that Alex’s line of questions concern me. “Why are you asking?”
“Just curious.” He gives a disarmingsmile, but I know him too well. That’s his negotiating smile, when he’s trying to obscure his real intent.
Someone has put him up to this. It’s the only thing that fits. And once I’ve made that connection, everything becomes obvious. He had absolutely no interest in my work yesterday morning, or the day before, or the week before that. But a trip to Fournier… to Van Wyk… and he’s asking questions he’s never asked before.
Van Wyk knows. HeknowsI’m investigating him. It wasn’t merely a suspicion—or if it was, his suspicion is strong enough to use Alex to dig too.
Or maybe it’s Fournier. He’s the one that gives the orders.
What did they talk about on their oh-so-civilized walk outside?
I see my mistakes laid out before me. The paper trail to the medical examiner’s office. Is that trackable? My questions of Amelia, in a room that I suspected was bugged. I was careful, yes, but careful enough? And immediately after I’d thrown Van Wyk off—or thought I had—by playing naïve to his questions. Walking straight up to his wife andconfirmingI was doing exactly what he thought I was.
Now Alex is their tool. What happens if he finds out I’m investigating Van Wyk? That I’m certain—even if I can’t prove it—that Van Wyk is a murderer? Do Alex’s loyalties to them trump his fleeting interest in me? Does his work, and all its millions, hold higher value than my life?
It’s pretty fucking obvious what the conclusion is.
But I still need to hear it, even though I already know.
