Page 123 of Unlocked

She had lain in the hospital bed for four days after it came back and said nothing to anyone about any of it. She had looked at her mother, sitting in the chair beside her bed, immaculate and solicitous and entirely unreadable. In that moment, she had understood with complete clarity that knowing what she knew and appearing to know nothing was the only advantage she had left.

So she had kept it.

She sat down in her leather chair and looked at the wall.

Two months of slow, careful, methodical work. Two months of pretending to take it easy while Ryker's files built up on her desk, and the picture on the wall grew more complete, and the threads she'd been pulling on for what felt like her entire adult life finally, finally started to connect to something solid.

She'd found it three days ago.

Lebowitz's cut. The money he'd siphoned off from his unauthorized investors, the retirees, the unauthorized add-ons, and the people who had handed over their savings because a man with a nice suit and a warm smile had told them it was safe. She'd traced the funds through four accounts in three countries and found it sitting in a holding company in Malta that had no apparent connection to anything except, if you looked very carefully at the registered agent, a small law firm in George Town that she'd seen before.

She had the account numbers. She had the routing information. She had enough to move the money or to give someone else what they needed to move it.

She had a meeting in forty minutes.

She changed her clothes slowly and deliberately, the way she did everything these days in public and semi-public, performing the careful movements of someone still recovering. She wore flat shoes and a loose sweater and left her hair down. She checked her reflection in the closet mirror and thought, not for the first time, that she looked like someone who had been through something. The shadows under her eyes were permanent now, or felt that way. The quality of her face had changed in some way she couldn't precisely name, something had gone out of it that she wasn't sure she wanted back because what had replaced it, whatever it was, felt more honest.

She took the elevator down and left through the side entrance.

The restaurant was four blocks away. She walked them at the pace of someone for whom four blocks required attention and effort, which wasn’t entirely a performance. She tired more easily than she had. The headaches came without warning. She was not, if she was being honest, entirely well.

She pushed through the door.

Armand Fontaine was already there, which she'd expected. He was at a corner table, his large frame settled on the chair with the unhurried ease of a man entirely comfortable waiting, his hands wrapped around a coffee cup, his dark eyes finding her the moment she came through the door.

He rose when she reached the table, all of him, the full considerable height of him, and the warmth in his expression was so genuine and so uncomplicated that she felt it land somewhere behind her sternum in a way that made her throat tight.

"Tatum," he said, and took both her hands briefly in his large ones before releasing them and waiting for her to sit before he sat himself. "It is good to see you up and moving. You look better than last week."

"That's a low bar," she said.

"Oui," he agreed pleasantly. "But we take what we can get." He studied her face with unhurried attention, a trait of the man who had spent decades reading people and cared about what he was reading. "How are you, truly? And do not tell me fine. I know what fine looks like and I know what not fine looks like, and I have known you long enough to tell the difference."

She almost smiled at that. "Some days are better than others. The headaches are improving. I tire more easily than I'd like." She paused. "I'm functional."

"Functional," he repeated. He said it gently, without judgment, but with the precision of a man noting that functional and well were not the same word at all. "This is not the same as well, you understand."

"I know," she said. "It's enough for now."

He nodded slowly and did not push, which was one of the things she valued most about Armand. He knew when to press and when to let something breathe, and he let this breathe.

The waiter came. Tatum ordered tea. Armand ordered more coffee and something to eat and looked at her with one raised eyebrow until she added a piece of toast to the order, which she hadn't been going to do and which she probably needed.

"I found it," she said, when the waiter had gone.

Armand's eyes sharpened immediately, all the warmth still there, but something else arriving behind it.

"Lebowitz's cut," she said. "The money from the unauthorized investors. The retirees. All of it." She reached into her bag, took out a folded piece of paper, and then slid it across the table. "Account numbers. Routing information. It's in Malta. It has been sitting there the whole time."

Armand unfolded the paper and looked at it for a long moment without speaking, his expression giving nothing away. This man, who had moved weapons across three continents, understood that showing a reaction to important information was a luxury he could not always afford. Then he refolded it with great care and put it in his breast pocket.

"Can you get it back to them?" Tatum asked. "To the people it was taken from? Including Jason Sakstra? He was pressured into it by his employer, and he lost everything."

"Oui," Armand said. "I can arrange this." He met her eyes. "It will take some time, and it must be done carefully, you understand, but yes, it can be done. It will be done."

She nodded. She had known he would say yes. She had been holding onto that knowledge for three days like something she was afraid to put down in case it disappeared.

"The board meeting is tomorrow," she said.