Page 129 of Cruel Lies

I hold it over the water and just look at it.

Then I pull my hand back. No. That feels wrong somehow. Melodramatic, kind of. Flushing it feels like something Old Cali would do, some grand gesture. New Cali doesn't need the gesture. I'll just… I'll just put it back in my bag.

Or maybe I'll frame it. God, that's embarrassing. I'm gonna pretend that thought never occurred to me.

I'm still standing there, half laughing at myself and my ridiculousness, when a phone starts ringing.

It's coming from somewhere out in the bedroom. Not my ringtone, and not Ronan's usual one, or at least not one I recognize, but I've heard his phone ring a hundred times and I don't pay that much attention to which is which.

"Ronan," I call over my shoulder. "Your phone."

The water keeps running. "What?"

"Your phone's ringing!"

The shower doesn't stop. "Can you grab it?" he calls back, his voice muffled and easy. "Tell whoever it is I'll call them back."

"Sure."

I fold the napkin and tuck it into the breast pocket of the shirt I'm wearing. Then I go back out into the bedroom to find the phone.

It takes me a minute to track it down.

It's not on the nightstand. It's not on the dresser. The ringing is coming from the far side, near where Ronan dropped his clothes earlier, in a heap by the chair, which is not like him at all. I follow the sound and find it in the pocket of his slacks.

Then I stop.

It's a phone, yes. But it's not the one I usually see him with.

This one is different. Older-looking. Plain. About a decade out of date, too, the kind of phone you'd buy at a gas station if you were desperate—or trying to hide something.

I don't think anything of it. Sure, Ronan has a bunch of phones. But rich people are weird. Lawyers are weird. I've stopped trying to figure out every strange thing about this man, because that way lies madness, and he's earned the benefit of the doubt.

The screen just says a name.Navi.

Oh, I know Navi. Well, I don'tknowhim, but I know of him. The cousin. A goober, apparently, but a loveable one. I've never met him, but I've heard enough stories that I feel like I have.

I answer it, already smiling and halfway to introducing myself.

"Hi," I start to say, "it's?—"

But a voice is already talking over me, fast and breezy, a man mid-thought who's been waiting to say something and doesn't hear me at all.

"Everything's good to go," Navi interrupts. "We can seize the Bradshaw woman's shares whenever you're ready."

I stop.

"… What?"

There's a silence on the other end. A different kind of silence than the friendly, mid-sentence pause I was expecting. This one is a man realizing he's said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

"I—" Navi starts.

"Who is this?" I say, even though I know. I'm not sure why I'm asking, because it doesn't really matter. It just feels like the kind of thing you say in this situation. "Say that again. What did you just say?"

The shower is still running behind me.

Ronan is still humming.