Page 90 of Hostile

“All on the line,” she agreed.

Outside the windows, December Manhattan was doing its late-afternoon thing—the amber hour, the one that made even the hard lines of the skyline look, for a moment, improbably soft. The city, indifferent as ever, asked nothing.

We stayed at the table until the light had faded, the city had settled into its evening geometry, the presentation was finished, and there was nothing left to do but go home and be ready for Monday.

When we finally gathered our things and turned off the lights, I held the conference room door open for her as I always had—the unremarkable reflex of habits that had apparently survived everything—and she walked through without comment, which was its own kind of acknowledgment.

In the elevator, she stood beside me, and neither of us said a word, which was its own kind of language. The one we’d been fluent in since the first library silence, since the first walk back from class that took twice as long as it should have, since the first Thursday coffee that ran an hour past the stated limit.

The lobby. The revolving door. The December cold.

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” she said.

“I’ll see you Monday.” I paused. “Megan?”

She turned.

“Thank you.” I meant all of it—the folder, the arrow, the ten years she’d spent building something extraordinary from damage, and the Saturday she’d spent helping me dismantle what her building had inadvertently enabled. “For all of it.”

She looked at me for a moment with the expression that was no longer armor and hadn’t been for a while, just her face, just Megan, the most interesting person I’d ever been in a room with.

“Among other things,” she said.

She turned and walked into the December evening, and I stood on the sidewalk, watching her go, and this time did not let her get far before I caught up.

She heard me behind her and slowed. I fell into step beside her. Neither of us said a word. We walked together. Side by side. Hand in hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

MEGAN: PRESENT

Monday morning came in quietly, without announcement—the city doing nothing different from any other December Monday, except that everything was different.

Charlie had confirmed no unusual activity over the weekend—no attorney filings, no communications to board members via traceable channels. Blair had either gone quiet or was moving through channels they couldn’t see. Either way, it didn’t matter.

Monday was here.

Wyatt texted at seven-fifteen.

Marcus confirmed full attendance. Nine o’clock.

I texted back.

I’ll be there at eight-fifty.

His response came in eleven seconds.

I know you will.

I set the phone down and looked at the clock on my wall—the one I’d bought myself the day I passed my Series 7, still keeping perfect time. I thought about all the minutes that had led to this moment. Not just the six years of the acquisition, not just the ten years since Cambridge. All of them—the parking lot, the porch swing, the Business Law classroom, the arrow in the December cold outside my dorm.

All those minutes, pointing here.

I picked up my coat.

The Aldridge building lobby was now familiar in a way it hadn’t been when I’d first walked into it as Megan Hale, Hale Capital, watching the guard’s eyes flick to his screen with the recognition that meant my name had been added to a list.

This morning, the guard nodded at me by name.