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“None whatsoever,” she says, which only proves she doesn’t understand me at all.
“You’d want me to leave.”
“You just got finished saying the police are onto you. Seems to me you’ll be going away anyway.” She lifts her chin, watching me through her glasses. Her eyes are sparkling. She’s enjoying herself, and in that moment, I can’t understand why I ever saw anything in her.
“I’d like a different contact at Big Bear to discuss the game,” I tell her.
Watching me, she nods. I can tell she feels she’s already won. The game is superfluous to her. “Consider it done. The offer will be more than fair.”
Theif you do as I askgoes unsaid.
I wonder if she’s the only one at the company who’s working with Retcon, or if the connection goes deeper. We’ll need to sell it to someone else.
“What’ll you do if I don’t agree?” I ask, even though I think I already know.
“We have a lot of information on you, Danny,” she says, leaning forward slightly, her back still straight. “You might say it’s become a special interest of mine. I underestimated you. I’m not wrong often.”
I bite back the urge to tell her she’s wrong more frequently than she might think—and that the first sign you might be a narcissist is if you have the urge to sayI’m not wrong oftenwithin the first five minutes of a conversation.
“That sounds like a threat.”
She shrugs. “Call it what you will. I personally see it as a statement of fact. We know things you don’t want other people to know. We can offer you protections no one else can. You’re not a stupid man.”
“No.” I lift my eyebrows. “Not stupid. Justbasic.”
She grins at me, showing her teeth. Her canines look like she took a file to them. I feel an unexpected shudder of revulsion, maybe because I remember what it was to look at her face and feel something so totally different from what I feel now. “I told you I underestimated you. Drastically, it turns out. I think I’m going to enjoy getting to know you again.”
“Maybe not as much as you think,” I say, getting up from my chair. I pull out a couple of twenties and slap them on the table.
While she may have underestimated me, I obviously overestimated her.
“Is our meeting over?” Daphne asks. She’s giving me that look again, like she thinks she can slice through all my secrets.
“Yes. I look forward to meeting my new contact on Friday. We’ll be dialing Drew into the meeting.”
“I’ll let them know,” she says. “I require your answer to my other question by the end of next week.”
“Don’t I get extra time for the holidays?”
“You think I’ve forgotten? You don’t celebrate them,” she says crisply. “Neither do I.”
“I celebrate them now.”
I leave without looking back at her, and I can feel her gaze on my back, following me out as if it’s the red dot from a gun. But I pretend not to notice or care. I throw a wave at Azalea, who’s watching me with an intensity that suggests she’s been ignoring everyone else at the bar, and start walking through downtown, making my way through the maze again and again, until I don’t feel the buzz of the alcohol at all anymore and my head is clear enough for me to drive to that spot in the woods—the one where Mira gave herself to me. It was my place and is now forever ours.
It’s dark out, completely dark. But it brings me no peace to be out here, where none of my senses are prickling, because the complete darkness only reminds me of that elevator, where Mira was my world.
I know what I have to do, but I also know that Daphne’s right. No matter what I do, I’m toast.
Then, when I’m feeling as low as I can go, my phone buzzes with a text. I check it and see two threads. One of them has several texts from Shane:
I’m sorry, man, but I don’t know if I can quit my job.
I know you won’t understand.
I fucking get it. But this is my life. I can’t give it up. Not even for Burke.
Not even for you.
