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“Or the death thing.”
“Not just yours.” He holds up the iPad and my heart lurches.
Harry. She’s drinking at a curved bar, and even though she’s not doing much, I can see the anger spitting from every pore. Beneath that is the fear. For me.
I swallow.
“That-That could be any time, any bar,” I stammer.
“I assure you she’s drinking cheap whiskey at a hotel bar. I can give you the address if you like, but it’s not going to help.”
I swallow. “As I said—”
“I’ll prove it.” He picks up the burner and presses a button. On the screen, Harry scrabbles for her phone. She answers almost immediately.
I can hear her from his phone, faint and all levels of stressed. “Hello? Fuck, this better be you, Lena.”
My heart constricts as I see her talking.
“There’s a man with a gun nearby, waiting for the signal, and he’ll take her out.”
I force myself to look at him. “Then you’re a dead man. Hurt me or anyone I love and the Quinate will destroy you.”
“Lena?” Harry grips her phone and her tiny voice eerily carries through the air. “Is that you? Hello?”
“How do you know I’m not Quinate?” he asks.
“Because the Quinate have rules. And this would mean you’re dead, even if you are.”
He hands me the phone, putting it on speaker as he does so and takes the iPad back.
“Lena?”
“Harriet, it’s me.”
For a moment there’s dead silence. I don’t usually call her that. It’s Harry most of the time.
“Where are you?” She pauses. “I’ve been so worried. Did you go to Rodger house?”
A flashback code to our childhood we use when there’s trouble and we need a code, a warning.
“Something like that.”
Before she can say another word, the man snatches the phone and presses end. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but you know…I don’t.”
Then he holds up the iPad again. Whoever’s filming has moved, showing me what could be clear shots. Head. Chest. Throat. Every position, and angle it’s clear whoever it is knows how to use a gun, it’s in the framing of every video shot of Harry.
I’m about to say something when he shows me Jac. Cold hits me even as my insides heat. Dark blonde, taking up more space than usual because he’s so damned focused, the suit he’s wearing’s crumpled, a first I think, for Jac Miller. He’s silver rings flash and there’s violence in every step. He’s in a foyer. This is a video, but I don’t know if it’s live. Until I see him moving, and from the position of the footage, I see the bar behind him and Harry.
Everything inside me gets tight and hot.
Hendrick, dark and forbidding and just as focused, is coming in hot on Jac’s heels.
The immaculate look of him has an edge, rough, full of blood, and violence.
Another angle flicks on, showing two imposing figures disappearing into the early night.
Which, I’m guessing, is now.
