Chapter 16 · Fetal Echo

There was blood on the seat and Marcus Sterling didn't look at it once.

His hand stayed flat on my knee, warm through the silk, like he could hold the rest of me shut from there.

"Sixty-eighth and Park," he said into the phone. "Service entrance. No lobby, no forms, nobody in the hall. If the elevator isn't standing open when I get there, it's your job."

The woman on the other end started in about protocol.

"Protocol is what people say when they want to be slow," he said, and hung up.

Then, quieter, without turning his head: "How much."

"I don't know. Enough."

"Look at me."

I didn't. I was busy counting. Fourteen months of Caspian's audit trail. Nineteen shell companies. Three jurisdictions. Anything except the wet heat spreading under his nine-hundred-dollar coat.

"Helena."

"It's a threatened miscarriage," I said. "At nine weeks, with a confirmed heartbeat, most of these resolve. Most. That's the number I've got and it's not a good one, so don't ask me for a better one."

"I didn't ask you for a statute."

"You asked how much. I'm telling you I don't have a number. I have a worst case.