Chapter 3 · Two Lines

Nineteen missed calls.

I counted them in his suite bathroom, with his palm still on the other side of the door. He had not given me the rest of the sentence. The bolt was still his. I was sick anyway, and that was the only reason the wood opened: I told him I would do it on his marble if he kept me in the room, and I needed a pharmacy that did not have his name on the deed.

He let the hand drop. He did not let the choice drop.

"You walk out of this building," he said, "and you walk back into my office before noon. With the truth. Or my driver says your name in Caspian's lobby."

I left with the question still on me. Nineteen calls. Eleven voicemails. All of them Caspian, who in five years had never phoned me eleven times about anything. Not the night his mother died. Not the day I made partner.

Which meant he'd driven past my building. Which meant he'd seen the car gone.

Good.

I deleted the stack without listening. Then I opened the cabinet over the fridge, took down the bourbon, and stood there holding the bottle like an idiot until I put it back. My hands hadn't shaken since I was twenty-nine and lost a murder trial I should have won in a walk.

They were shaking now. Not because of Caspian. Because a man's thumb had stayed on my throat for three full seconds, and I had let it, and the door behind him had been the only one.

I made the toilet with two seconds to spare.

Afterward I sat on the tile with my cheek on the tub, and my brain, which never stops billing, started arithmetic I had not authorized.

Four days. Maybe five.

No. I run on a quarter. It doesn't drift. It had never drifted.

Then the last month. The Vinson dump. Three all-nighters. The wedding binder I had finally stopped pretending to want. Stress does that, I told myself. Stress can hollow out a month.

I got up, brushed my teeth twice, and went to Duane Reade on Twenty-Third with my hair in a knot and a hood up, forty-one years old and buying the box like a teenager buying beer. Nobody looked at me. I paid cash. I moved the box from the bag to the inside pocket and back, because the inside pocket is where my phone lives, and I was not putting those two things on speaking terms.

I came into the office at ten to six. The thirty-fourth floor was dark. Nothing in that building belonged to me anymore. As of Tuesday, every chair, every file, every brass letter of my name belonged to Marcus Sterling. I still had a key. Habits die slow.

The restroom on my floor has one stall and a lock I have never seen fail. I sat on the closed lid, did the thing, and set it on the marble ledge. I made myself look at the fog on the Hudson while it worked.

Ninety seconds. I have waited out verdicts with less dread.

Two lines.

Both of them blue. The second one faint, and faint still counts. I didn't cry. I laughed, once, ugly, off the tile, and then I put my hand over my own mouth like somebody else was in the room.

I wrapped it in brown paper towel, three folds, and buried it in the inside pocket. Six blocks. A public trash can. That was the plan.

At nine-fifteen his assistant called and asked whether I could come up to sixty.

Not whether I was free. Whether I could.

I said I had a deposition.

She said she would hold the elevator.

Sixty was glass on three sides and mahogany on the fourth, quieter than a church. Two doors. Both heavy. A desk you could land a plane on. The carpet ate my heels, which I resented. He rose when I came in, which I resented more. No jacket. Sleeves rolled once. Silver at the temples he hadn't bothered to hide. Hands that had no business being that steady.

"You're late," I said. "Some of us bill by the hour."

"Some of us own the hours." He didn't sit. He came around the desk, and the room got smaller by half. Cedar. Midnight bar. My stomach turned and I blamed the night, and I knew I was lying. "My son has called me eleven times."

"Congratulations."

"He thinks I might know where his fiancée is."

"Do you."

His eyes came down and back up and did not pretend. "I watched her try the suite door at six-fourteen. I still had my hand on it."

"Get your facts right. You're a witness now."

The corner of his mouth moved. He stopped a foot away. Razor burn under the jaw. The cuff he'd bothered with before dawn.

"The paperwork," he said. "Your equity rolls into the acquisition. I need the ethics disclosure by Monday."

"Send it to my office."

"I did. Thursday."

"Send it again."

"You're not going to ask for a carve-out." His head tilted. "Any other lawyer in this building would have been in my lobby with a list."

"I don't need one. The engagement is over." It came out flat, which is how I say true things. "Eight-forty last night. Caspian's couch. A woman from Kessler's group. Her shoes under my side of the table. There is no fiancé, no future father-in-law, no wedding. You bought a firm and you got a scandal with the ribbon still on it."

"It isn't a scandal." He closed it like a folder. "It's a Friday."

"Then we're done."

I reached for the bag.

He got there first. His hand closed on the strap, not hard, just first, and he said my name the way he had said it against my ear in the dark. Every hair on my arms stood up.

"Helena. Look at me."

"Let go of my bag."

"You've been green since you walked in. You're not drinking the coffee. You didn't drink the bourbon."

The bag tipped.

Something white slid out of the inside pocket, bounced once off the blotter, and clattered onto the mahogany between us. Brown paper towel, half open. A white plastic stick. Two blue lines.

The tower hummed. Sixty floors, all of them very far below.

He picked the stick up. Two lines between his fingers. His other hand found the deadbolt without looking at it. Brass. The small final click. The only door on that wall.

"Don't speak," he said, eyes on the two lines. "Not until I tell you whose child that is."

His mouth opened.

The hall stayed shut, and the word did not come.